Michel de Montaigne - Man Quotes

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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
Man is certainly crazy. He could not make a mite, and he makes gods by the dozen.

Michel de Montaigne
Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition.

Michel de Montaigne
If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because it was I.

Michel de Montaigne
The corruption of the age is made up by the particular contribution of every individual man; some contribute treachery, others injustice, atheism, tyranny, avarice, cruelty, according to their power.

Michel de Montaigne
Man (in good earnest) is a marvellous vain, fickle, and unstable subject, and on whom it is very hard to form any certain and uniform judgment.

Michel de Montaigne
Of all human and ancient opinions concerning religion, that seems to me the most likely and most excusable, that acknowledged God as an incomprehensible power, the original and preserver of all things, all goodness, all perfection, receiving and taking in good part the honour and reverence that man paid him, under what method, name, or ceremonies soever

Michel de Montaigne
Every man may speak truly, but to speak methodically, prudently, and fully is a talent that few men have.

Michel de Montaigne
God defend me from being an honest man according to the description which every day I see made by each man to his own glorification

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
In this present that God has made us, there is nothing unworthy our care; we stand accountable for it even to a hair; and is it not a commission to man, to conduct man according to his condition; 'tis express, plain, and the very principal one, and the Creator has seriously and strictly prescribed it to us. Authority has power only to work in regard to matters of common judgment, and is of more weight in a foreign language; therefore let us again charge at it in this place

Michel de Montaigne
Plato says, "'T is to no purpose for a sober man to knock at the door of the Muses;" and Aristotle says "that no excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of folly."

Michel de Montaigne
The great and glorious masterpiece of man is to know how to live to purpose.

Michel de Montaigne
Surely man is a being wonderfully vain, changeable, and vacillating.

Michel de Montaigne
There is a huge gulf between the man who follows the conventions and laws of his country and the man who sets out to regiment them and to change them.

Michel de Montaigne
We need very strong ears to hear ourselves judged frankly; and because there are few who can endure frank criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to criticize us perform a remarkable act of friendship; for to undertake to wound or offend a man for his own good is to have a healthy love for him.

Michel de Montaigne
Let no man be ashamed to speak what he is not ashamed to think.

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
Every man carries the entire form of the human condition.

Michel de Montaigne
A man must be a little mad if he does not want to be even more stupid.

Michel de Montaigne
The worth and value of a man is in his heart and his will; there lies his real honour. Valour is the strength, not of legs and arms, but of heart and soul.

Michel de Montaigne
Man, a subject which is marvellously vain, diverse, and like the waves of the sea.

Michel de Montaigne
A man of understanding has lost nothing, if he has himself.
In French: L'homme d'entendement n'a rien perdu, s'il a soi-même.

Michel de Montaigne
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