Michel de Montaigne - Mind Quotes

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Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.

Michel de Montaigne
Who so hath his mind on taking, hath it no more on what he taketh.

Michel de Montaigne
Meditation is a rich and powerful method of study for anyone who knows how to examine his mind.

Michel de Montaigne
If these Essays were worthy of being judged, it might fall out, in my opinion, that they would not find much favour, either with common and vulgar minds, or with uncommon and eminent ones: the former would not find enough in them, the latter would find too much; they might manage to live somewhere in the middle region.

Michel de Montaigne
The worth of the mind consisteth not in going high, but in marching orderly.

Michel de Montaigne
If my mind could gain a firm footing, I would not make essays, I would make decisions; but it is always in apprenticeship and on trial.

Michel de Montaigne
It is probable that the principal credit of miracles, visions, enchantments, and such extraordinary occurrences comes from the power of imagination, acting principally upon the minds of the common people, which are softer.

Michel de Montaigne
I, who am king of the matter I treat, and who owe an accounting for it to no one, do not for all that believe myself in all I write. I often hazard sallies of my mind which I mistrust.

Michel de Montaigne
Perhaps it is not without reason that we attribute facility in belief and conviction to simplicity and ignorance; for it seems to me I once learned that belief was sort of an impression made on our mind, and that the softer it is the less resistant t.

Michel de Montaigne
The pleasure we hold in esteem for the course of our lives ought to have a greater share of our time dedicated to it; we should refuse no occasion nor omit any opportunity of drinking, and always have it in our minds.

Michel de Montaigne
The most beautiful lives, to my mind, are those that conform to the common human pattern, with order, but without miracle and without eccentricity.

Michel de Montaigne
I enter into discussion and argument with great freedom and ease, inasmuch as opinion finds me in a bad soil to penetrate and take deep root in. No propositions astonish me, no belief offends me, whatever contrast it offers to my own. There is no fancy so frivolous and so extravagant that it does not seem to me quite suitable to the production of the human mind.

Michel de Montaigne
It is not a mind, it is not a body that we educate, but it is a man, and we must not make two parts of him.

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

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
To begin depriving death of its greatest advantage over us, let us adopt a way clean contrary to that common one; let us deprive death of its strangeness, let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death... We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere." "To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.

Michel de Montaigne
There is no pleasure to me without communication; there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind but I grieve that I have no one to tell it to.

Michel de Montaigne
So it is with minds. Unless you keep them busy with some definite subject that will bridle and control them, they throw themselves in disorder hither and yon in the vague field of imagination... And there is no mad or idle fancy that they do no bring forth in the agitation.

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

Michel de Montaigne
When I am attacked by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books. They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.

Michel de Montaigne
I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better.

Michel de Montaigne
It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness. A spirited mind never stops within itself; it is always aspiring and going beyond its strength.

Michel de Montaigne
The first lessons with which we should irrigate his mind should be those which teach him to know himself, and to know how to die... and to live.

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

Michel de Montaigne
Is it reasonable that even the arts should take advantage of and profit by our natural stupitidy and feebleness of mind?

Michel de Montaigne
In my opinion, the most fruitful and natural play of the mind is in conversation. I find it sweeter than any other action in life; and if I were forced to choose, I think I would rather lose my sight than my hearing and voice. The study of books is a drowsy and feeble exercise which does not warm you up.

Michel de Montaigne