Michel de Montaigne - Essays (1580)

374 Sourced Quotes

View all Michel de Montaigne Quotes
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
No man dies before his hour. The time you leave behind was no more yours, than that which was before your birth, and concerneth you no more.

Michel de Montaigne
Long life, and short, are by death made all one; for there is no long, nor short, to things that are no more.

Michel de Montaigne
I will follow the right side even to the fire, but excluding the fire if I can.

Michel de Montaigne
Not only does the wind of accidents stir me according to its blowing, but I am also stirred and troubled by the instability of my attitude.

Michel de Montaigne
I see this evident, that we willingly accord to piety only the services that flatter our passions.

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
As great enmities spring from great friendships, and mortal distempers from vigorous health, so do the most surprising and the wildest frenzies from the high and lively agitations of our souls.

Michel de Montaigne
Whatever is preached to us, and whatever we learn, we should still remember that it is man that gives, and man that receives; it is a mortal hand that presents it to us, it is a mortal hand that accepts it.

Michel de Montaigne
I must use these great men's virtues as a cloak for my weakness.

Michel de Montaigne
If I were a maker of books I should compile a register, with comments, of different deaths. He who should teach people to die, would teach them to live.

Michel de Montaigne
Seeing that the Senses cannot decide our dispute, being themselves full of uncertainty, we must have recourse to Reason; there is no reason but must be built upon another reason: so here we are retreating backwards to infinity.

Michel de Montaigne
Like the watermen who advance forward while they look backward.

Michel de Montaigne
I go out of my way, but rather by license than carelessness.... It is the inattentive reader
who loses my subject, not I. Some word about it will always be found off in a corner, which will not fail to be sufficient, though it takes little room.

Michel de Montaigne
It is no hard matter to get children; but after they are born, then begins the trouble, solicitude, and care rightly to train, principle, and bring them up.

Michel de Montaigne
If virtue cannot shine bright, but by the conflict of contrary appetites, shall we then say that she cannot subsist without the assistance of vice, and that it is from her that she derives her reputation and honor?

Michel de Montaigne
A man may by custom fortify himself against pain, shame, and suchlike accidents; but as to death, we can experience it but once, and are all apprentices when we come to it

Michel de Montaigne
The body enjoys a great share in our being, and has an eminent place in it. Its structure and composition, therefore, are worthy of proper consideration.

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
Presumption is our natural and original malady. The most vulnerable and frail of all creatures is man, and at the same time the most arrogant.

Michel de Montaigne
The common notions that we find in credit around us and infused into our souls by our fathers' seed, these seem to be the universal and natural ones. Whence it comes to pass that what is off the hinges of custom, people believe to be off the hinges of reason.

Michel de Montaigne
A volunteer, you assign yourself specific roles and risks according to your judgement of their brilliance and importance, and you see when life itself may be justifiably devoted to them.

Michel de Montaigne
Who is it that does not voluntarily exchange his health, his repose, and his very life for reputation and glory? The most useless, frivolous, and false coin that passes current among us.

Michel de Montaigne
Glory and repose are things that cannot possibly inhabit in one and the same place.

Michel de Montaigne
To honor him whom we have made is far from honoring him that hath made us.

Michel de Montaigne
I seek in the reading of books, only to please myself, by an honest diversion.

Michel de Montaigne
For there is no air that men so greedily draw in, that diffuses itself so soon, and that penetrates so deep as that of license.

Michel de Montaigne
Whoever will imagine a perpetual confession of ignorance, a judgment without leaning or inclination, on any occasion whatever, hasa conception of Pyrrhonism.

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