Michel de Montaigne - Nature Quotes

25 Sourced Quotes

View all Michel de Montaigne Quotes
Let us a little permit Nature to take her own way; she better understands her own affairs than we.

Michel de Montaigne
My opinion is that we must lend ourselves to others and give ourselves only to ourselves. If my will happened to be prone to mortgage and attach itself, I would not last: I am too tender, both by nature and by practice.

Michel de Montaigne
There is nothing useless in nature; not even uselessness itself

Michel de Montaigne
Nature has, herself, I fear, imprinted in man a kind of instinct to inhumanity.

Michel de Montaigne
It is indeed the boundary of life, beyond which we are not to pass; which the law of nature has pitched for a limit not to be exceeded.

Michel de Montaigne
If I were of the trade, I should naturalize art as much as they "artialize" nature.

Michel de Montaigne
I cruelly hate cruelty, both by nature and reason, as the worst of all the vices. But then I am so soft in this that I cannot seea chicken's neck wrung without distress, and cannot bear to hear the squealing of a hare between the teeth of my hounds.

Michel de Montaigne
We hold death, poverty, and grief for our principal enemies; but this death, which some repute the most dreadful of all dreadful things, who does not know that others call it the only secure harbor from the storm and tempests of life, the sovereign good of nature, the sole support of liberty, and the common and sudden remedy of all evils?

Michel de Montaigne
Nature has with a Motherly Tenderness observed this, that the Action she has enjoyned us for our Necessity should be also pleasant to us, and invites us to them, not only by Reason, but also by Appetite: and ’tis Injustice to infringe her Laws.

Michel de Montaigne
Nature has made us a present of a broad capacity for entertaining ourselves apart, and often calls us to do so, to teach us that we owe ourselves in part to society, but in the best part to ourselves.

Michel de Montaigne
Amongst all other vices there is none I hate more than cruelty, both by nature and judgment, as the extremest of all vices.

Michel de Montaigne
Miracles arise from our ignorance of nature, not from nature itself.

Michel de Montaigne
The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom.

Michel de Montaigne
It is not reasonable that art should win the place of honor over our great and powerful mother Nature. We have so overloaded the beauty and richness of her works by our inventions that we have quite smothered her.

Michel de Montaigne
Let us give Nature a chance; she knows her business better than we do.

Michel de Montaigne
For my own part, I may desire in general to be other than I am; I may condemn and dislike my whole form, and beg of Almighty God for an entire reformation, and that He will please to pardon my natural infirmity: but I ought not to call this repentance, methinks, no more than the being dissatisfied that I am not an angel or Cato. My actions are regular, and conformable to what I am and to my condition; I can do no better; and repentance does not properly touch things that are not in our power; sorrow does.. I imagine an infinite number of natures more elevated and regular than mine; and yet I do not for all that improve my faculties, no more than my arm or will grow more strong and vigorous for conceiving those of another to be so.

Michel de Montaigne
'T is one and the same Nature that rolls on her course, and whoever has sufficiently considered the present state of things might certainly conclude as to both the future and the past.

Michel de Montaigne
It is as difficult to condemn illicit loves by the laws of nature, as it is easy by human laws.

Michel de Montaigne
Nature is a gentle guide, but not more sweet and gentle than prudent and just.

Michel de Montaigne
Nature clasps all her creatures in a universal embrace; there is not one of them which she has not plainly furnished with all means necessary to the conservation of its being.

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

Michel de Montaigne
Nature forms us for ourselves, not for others; to be, not to seem.

Michel de Montaigne
I am angry at the custom of forbidding children to call their father by the name of father, and to enjoin them another, as more full of respect and reverence, as if nature had not sufficiently provided for our authority. We call Almighty God Father, and disdain to have our children call us so. I have reformed this error in my family.—[As did Henry IV. of France]—And 'tis also folly and injustice to deprive children, when grown up, of familiarity with their father, and to carry a scornful and austere countenance toward them, thinking by that to keep them in awe and obedience; for it is a very idle farce that, instead of producing the effect designed, renders fathers distasteful, and, which is worse, ridiculous to their own children.

Michel de Montaigne
Why may not a goose say thus: "All the parts of the universe I have an interest in: the earth serves me to walk upon, the sun to light me; the stars have their influence upon me; I have such an advantage by the winds and such by the waters; there is nothing that yon heavenly roof looks upon so favourably as me. I am the darling of Nature! Is it not man that keeps and serves me?"

Michel de Montaigne
If you don't know how to die, don't worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don't bother your head about it.

Michel de Montaigne