Michel de Montaigne - Knowledge Quotes

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There is no desire more natural than the desire of knowledge.
Il n'est desir plus naturel que le desir de connaissance

Michel de Montaigne
In truth, knowledge is a great and very useful quality; those who despise it give evidence enough of their stupidity. Yet I do not set its value at that extreme measure that some attribute to it.

Michel de Montaigne
My trade and my art is living. He who forbids me to speak about it according to my sense, experience, and practice, let him orderthe architect to speak of buildings not according to himself but according to his neighbor; according to another man's knowledge, not according to his own.

Michel de Montaigne
I seek in books only to give myself pleasure by honest amusement; or if I study, I seek only the learning that treats of the knowledge of myself and instructs me in how to die well and live well.

Michel de Montaigne
The share we have in the knowledge of truth, such as it is, has not been acquired by our own powers. God has taught ushis wonderful secrets; our faith is not of our acquiring, it is purely the gift of another's bounty.

Michel de Montaigne
Knowledge is an excellent drug; but no drug has virtue enough to preserve itself from corruption and decay, if the vessel be tainted and impure wherein it is put to keep.

Michel de Montaigne
The plague of man is the opinion of knowledge. That is why ignorance is so recommended by our religion as a quality suitable to belief and obedience.

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
In truth, the care and expense of our fathers aims only at furnishing our heads with knowledge; of judgement and virtue, little news.

Michel de Montaigne
Hath God obliged himself not to exceed the bounds of our knowledge?

Michel de Montaigne
The knowledge of courtesy and good manners is a very necessary study. It is like grace and beauty, that which begets liking and an inclination to love one another at the first sight.

Michel de Montaigne
Every other knowledge is harmful to him who does not have knowledge of goodness.

Michel de Montaigne
Judgement can do without knowledge: but not knowledge without judgement.

Michel de Montaigne
We must not attach knowledge to the mind, we have to incorporate it there.

Michel de Montaigne
We are born to inquire after truth; it belongs to a greater power to possess it. It is not, as Democritus said, hid in the bottom of the deeps, but rather elevated to an infinite height in the divine knowledge.

Michel de Montaigne
All other knowledge is hurtful to him who has not honesty and good-nature

Michel de Montaigne
We can be knowledgeable with other men's knowledge, but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.

Michel de Montaigne
As far as physicians go, chance is more valuable than knowledge.

Michel de Montaigne
Learning is a good medicine: but no medicine is powerful enough to preserve itself from taint and corruption independently of defects in the jar that it is kept in. One man sees clearly but does not see straight: consequently he sees what is good but fails to follow it; he sees knowledge and does not use it.

Michel de Montaigne
We are no nearer heaven on the top of Mount Cenis than at the bottom of the sea; take the distance with your astrolabe. They debase God even to the carnal knowledge of women, to so many times, and so many generations.

Michel de Montaigne