Michel de Montaigne Quotes

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Every day I hear stupid people say things that are not stupid.

Michel de Montaigne
It is a thorny undertaking, and more so than it seems, to follow a movement so wandering as that of our mind, to penetrate the opaque depths of its innermost folds, to pick out and immobilize the innumerable flutterings that agitate it.

Michel de Montaigne
There were never in the world two opinions alike, any more than two hairs or two grains. Their most universal quality is diversity.

Michel de Montaigne
I never rebel so much against France as not to regard Paris with a friendly eye; she has had my heart since my childhood... I love her tenderly, even to her warts and her spots. I am French only by this great city: the glory of France, and one of the noblest ornaments of the world.

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
No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately.

Michel de Montaigne
It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.

Michel de Montaigne
Man is quite insane. He wouldn't know how to create a maggot, and he creates gods by the dozen.

Michel de Montaigne
Truly man is a marvelously vain, diverse, and undulating object. It is hard to found any constant and uniform judgment on him.

Michel de Montaigne
I aim here only at revealing myself, who will perhaps be different tomorrow, if I learn something new which changes me.

Michel de Montaigne
No one should be subjected to force over things which belonged to him.

Michel de Montaigne
Since philosophy is the art which teaches us how to live, and since children need to learn it as much as we do at other ages, why do we not instruct them in it?.. But in truth I know nothing about the philosophy of education except this: that the greatest and the most important difficulty known to human learning seems to lie in that area which treats how to bring up children and how to educate them.

Michel de Montaigne
We are Christians by the same title as we are natives of Perigord or Germany.

Michel de Montaigne
The oldest and best known evil was ever more supportable than one that was new and untried.

Michel de Montaigne
No two men ever judged alike of the same thing, and it is impossible to find two opinions exactly similar, not only in different men but in the same men at different times.

Michel de Montaigne
The bitterness of the potion, and the abhorrence of the patient are necessary circumstances to the operation. It must be something to trouble and disturb the stomach that must purge and cure it.

Michel de Montaigne
It is a monstrous thing that I will say, but I will say it all the same: I find in many things more restraint and order in my morals than in my opinions, and my lust less depraved than my reason.

Michel de Montaigne
When I play with my cat, who knows whether she isn't amusing herself with me more than I am with her?

Michel de Montaigne
Nothing prints more lively in our minds than something we wish to forget.

Michel de Montaigne
Speech belongs half to him who speaks and half to him who hears.

Michel de Montaigne
The first law that ever God gave to man was a law of pure obedience; it was a commandment naked and simple, wherein man had nothing to inquire after, nor to dispute; forasmuch as to obey is the proper office of a rational soul, acknowledging a heavenly superior and benefactor.

Michel de Montaigne
Those who give the first shock to a state are the first overwhelmed in its ruin; the fruits of public commotion are seldom enjoyed by him who was the first mover; he only beats the water for another's net.

Michel de Montaigne
Such as are in immediate fear of a losing their estates, of banishment, or of slavery, live in perpetual anguish, and lose all appetite and repose; whereas such as are actually poor, slaves, or exiles, ofttimes live as merrily as other folk.

Michel de Montaigne
Sciences and Arts are not cast in a mold, but rather by little and little formed and shaped by often handling and polishing them over; even as bears fashion their young whelps by often licking them.

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
Human wisdom makes as ill use of her talent when she exercises it in rescinding from the number and sweetness of those pleasures that are naturally our due, as she employs it favorably and well in artificially disguising and tricking out the ills of life to alleviate the sense of them.

Michel de Montaigne
How often our involuntary facial motions testify to the thoughts we were keeping secret, and betray us to those around!

Michel de Montaigne
In the examples that I here bring in of what I have [read], heard, done or said, I have refrained from daring to alter even the smallest and most indifferent circumstances. My conscience falsifies not an iota; for my knowledge I cannot answer.

Michel de Montaigne
If by being overstudious, we impair our health and spoil our good humor, let us give it up.

Michel de Montaigne
We every day and every hour say things of another that we might more properly say of ourselves, could we but apply our observations to our own concerns.

Michel de Montaigne