Michel de Montaigne - Life Quotes

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'As a man who knows how to make his education into a rule of life not a means of showing off; who can control himself and obey his own principles.' The true mirror of our discourse is the course of our lives.

Michel de Montaigne
There is, nevertheless, a certain respect and a general duty of humanity that ties us, not only to beasts that have life and sense, but even to trees and plants.

Michel de Montaigne
I set forth a humble and inglorious life; that does not matter. You can tie up all moral philosophy with a common and private life just as well as with a life of richer stuff. Each man bears the entire form of man's estate.

Michel de Montaigne
The perpetual work of your life is but to lay the foundation of death.

Michel de Montaigne
Those who have compared our life to a dream were right... We are sleeping awake, and waking asleep.

Michel de Montaigne
Health is a precious thing, and the only one, in truth, meriting that a man should lay out not only his time, sweat, labor and goods, but also life itself to obtain it.

Michel de Montaigne
The ceaseless labour of your life is to build the house of death.

Michel de Montaigne
It needs good management to enjoy life. I enjoy it twice as much as others, for the measure of enjoyment depends on the greater or less attention that we give to it...The shorter my possession of life the deeper and fuller I must make it.

Michel de Montaigne
He who remembers the evils he has undergone, and those that have threatened him, and the slight causes that have changed him from one state to another, prepares himself in that way for future changes and for recognizing his condition. The life of Caesar has no more to show us than our own; an emperor's or an ordinary man's, it is still a life subject to all human accidents.

Michel de Montaigne
Life itself is neither a good nor an evil: life is where good or evil find a place, depending on how you make it for them.

Michel de Montaigne
Those who have likened our life to a dream were more right, by chance, than they realised. We are awake while sleeping, and waking sleep.

Michel de Montaigne
We must learn to suffer what we cannot evade; our life, like the harmony of the world, is composed of contrary things, and one part is no less necessary than the other.

Michel de Montaigne
God might grant us riches, honours, life, and even health, to our own hurt; for every thing that is pleasing to us is not always good for us. If he sends us death, or an increase of sickness, instead of a cure, [...] "Thy rod and thy staff have comforted me," he does it by the rule of his providence, which better and more certainly discerns what is proper for us than we can do; and we ought to take it in good part, as coming from a wise and most friendly hand

Michel de Montaigne
No man is so exquisitely honest or upright in living, but that ten times in his life he might not lawfully be hanged.

Michel de Montaigne