Michel de Montaigne Quotes

591 Sourced Quotes

And I loathe people who find it harder to put up with a gown askew than with a soul askew and who judge a man by his bow, his bearing and his boots.

Michel de Montaigne
Difficulty is a coin the learned make use of like jugglers, to conceal the inanity of their art.

Michel de Montaigne
There is no torture that a woman would not suffer to enhance her beauty.

Michel de Montaigne
Whatever is preached to us, and whatever we learn, we should still remember that it is man that gives, and man that receives; it is a mortal hand that presents it to us, it is a mortal hand that accepts it.

Michel de Montaigne
The world is but a perennial movement. All things in it are in constant motion-the earth, the rocks of the Caucasus, the pyramids of Egypt-both with the common motion and with their own.

Michel de Montaigne
What of a truth that is bounded by these mountains and is falsehood to the world that lives beyond?

Michel de Montaigne
I have seen books made of things neither studied nor ever understood... the author contenting himself for his own part, to have cast the plot and projected the design of it, and by his industry to have bound up the fagot of unknown provisions; at least the ink and paper his own. This may be said to be a buying or borrowing, and not a making or compiling of a book.

Michel de Montaigne
Why dost thou complain of this world? It detains thee not; thy own cowardice is the cause, if thou livest in pain.

Michel de Montaigne
Few men have been admired by their own households.

Michel de Montaigne
Just as in habiliments it is a sign of weakness to wish to make oneself noticeable by some peculiar and unaccustomed fashion, so, in language, the quest for new-fangled phrases and little-known words comes from a puerile and pedantic ambition.

Michel de Montaigne
The religion of my doctor or my lawyer cannot matter. That consideration has nothing in common with the functions of the friendship they owe me.

Michel de Montaigne
There is perhaps no more obvious vanity than to write of it so vainly.

Michel de Montaigne
Obstinacy and contention are common qualities, most appearing in, and best becoming, a mean and illiterate soul.

Michel de Montaigne
Were I to live my life over again, I should live it just as I have done. I neither complain of the past, nor do I fear the future.

Michel de Montaigne
The most regular and most perfect soul in the world has but too much to do to keep itself upright from being overthrown by its own weakness.

Michel de Montaigne
To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquility in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately. All other things, ruling, hoarding, building, are only little appendages and props, at most.

Michel de Montaigne
All the world knows me in my book, and my book in me.

Michel de Montaigne
It is the sharpness of our mind that gives the edge to our pains and pleasures.

Michel de Montaigne
I admire the assurance and confidence everyone has in himself, whereas there is hardly anything I am sure I know or that I dare give my word I can do.

Michel de Montaigne
I want to be seen here in my simple, natural, ordinary fashion, without straining or artifice; for it is myself that I portray... I am myself the matter of my book.

Michel de Montaigne
The utility of living consists not in the length of days, but in the use of time; a man may have lived long, and yet lived but a little.

Michel de Montaigne
Virtue refuses facility for her companion … the easy, gentle, and sloping path that guides the footsteps of a good natural disposition is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road.

Michel de Montaigne
Miracles arise from our ignorance of nature, not from nature itself.

Michel de Montaigne
The sage says that all that is under heaven incurs the same law and the same fate.

Michel de Montaigne
Might I have had my own will, I would not have married Wisdom herself, if she would have had me.

Michel de Montaigne