Michel de Montaigne - True Quotes

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Dreams are the true interpreters of our inclinations; but there is art required to sort and understand them.

Michel de Montaigne
I was not long since in a company where I was not who of my fraternity brought news of a kind of pills, by true account, composed of a hundred and odd several ingredients; whereat we laughed very heartily, and made ourselves good sport; for what rock so hard were able to resist the shock or withstand the force of so thick and numerous a battery?

Michel de Montaigne
It makes me hate accepting things that are probable when they are held up before me as infallibly true. I prefer these words which tone down and modify the hastiness of our propositions: "Perhaps, In some sort, Some, They say, I think," and the like.

Michel de Montaigne
Oh, a friend! How true is that old saying, that the enjoyment of one is sweeter and more necessary than that of the elements of water and fire!

Michel de Montaigne
In true friendship, in which I am expert, I give myself to my friend more than I draw him to me. I not only like doing him good better than having him do me good, but also would rather have him do good to himself than to me; he does me most good when he does himself good.

Michel de Montaigne
Great authors, when they write about causes, adduce not only those they think are true but also those they do not believe in, provided they have some originality and beauty. They speak truly and usefully enough if they speak ingeniously.

Michel de Montaigne
The height and value of true virtue consists in the facility, utility, and pleasure of its exercise; so far from difficulty, that boys, as well as men, and the innocent as well as the subtle, may make it their own; and it is by order and good conduct, and not by force, that it is to be acquired.

Michel de Montaigne
What kind of truth is this which is true on one side of a mountain and false on the other?

Michel de Montaigne
To say less of yourself than is true is stupidity, not modesty. To pay yourself less than you are worth is cowardice and pusillanimity.

Michel de Montaigne
Beauty is the true prerogative of women, and so peculiarly their own, that our sex, though naturally requiring another sort of feature, is never in its lustre but when puerile and beardless, confused and mixed with theirs.

Michel de Montaigne
The most evident token and apparent sign of true wisdom is a constant and unconstrained rejoicing.

Michel de Montaigne
In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page-boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk, they are all part of the curriculum.

Michel de Montaigne
Apollo said that every one's true worship was that which he found in use in the place where he chanced to be.

Michel de Montaigne
Their [the Skeptics'] way of speaking is: "I settle nothing... I do not understand it... Nothing seems true that may not seem false." Their sacramental word is Etc£%o>, which is to say, I suspend my judgment.

Michel de Montaigne
A true prayer and religious reconciling of ourselves to Almighty God cannot enter into an impure soul, subject at the very time to the dominion of Satan. He who calls God to his assistance whilst in a course of vice, does as if a cut-purse should call a magistrate to help him, or like those who introduce the name of God to the attestation of a lie.

Michel de Montaigne
No profession or occupation is more pleasing than the military; a profession or exercise both noble in execution (for the strongest, most generous and proudest of all virtues is true valor) and noble in its cause. No utility either more just or universal than the protection of the repose or defense of the greatness of one's country. The company and daily conversation of so many noble, young and active men cannot but be well-pleasing to you.

Michel de Montaigne
The mariner of old said to Neptune in a great tempest, "O God! thou mayest save me if thou wilt, and if thou wilt thou mayest destroy me; but whether or no, I will steer my rudder true."

Michel de Montaigne
Virtue refuses facility for her companion … the easy, gentle, and sloping path that guides the footsteps of a good natural disposition is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road.

Michel de Montaigne
'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
A man should keep for himself a little back shop, all his own, quite unadulterated, in which he establishes his true freedom and chief place of seclusion and solitude.

Michel de Montaigne
True it is that she who escapeth safe and unpolluted from out the school of freedom, giveth more confidence of herself than she who comet sound out of the school of severity and restraint.

Michel de Montaigne