Michel de Montaigne Quotes - Page 2

Tis no wonder, says one of the ancients, that chance has so great a dominion over us, since it is by chance we live.

No passion disturbs the soundness of our judgement as anger does.

Judgement can do without knowledge: but not knowledge without judgement.

He who fears he shall suffer already suffers what he fears.

There is no passion so much transports thesincerity of judgement as doth anger

Plato forbids children wine till eighteen years of age, and to get drunk till forty; but, after forty, gives them leave to please themselves, and to mix a little liberally in their feasts the influence of Dionysos, that good deity who restores to younger men their gaiety and to old men their youth...fit to inspire old men with mettle to divert themselves in dancing and music; things of great use, and that they dare not attempt when sober.

We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.

The beauty of stature is the only beauty of men.

L'honneste est stable et permanent.

The highest wisdom is continual cheerfulness such a state like the region above the moon is always clear and serene.

Il n'est rien qui tente mes larmes que les larmes.

Riches like glory or health have no more beauty or pleasure than their possessor is pleased to lend them.

Experience has taught me this, that we undo ourselves by impatience. Misfortunes have their life and their limits, their sickness and their health.

A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.

Once conform once do what others do because they do it and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.

I do not care so much what I am to others as I care what I am to myself.

We should tend our freedom wisely.

Il n'est si homme de bien, qu'il mette à l'examen des loix toutes ses actions et pensées, qui ne soit pendable dix fois en sa vie.(There is no man so good that if he placed all his actions and thoughts under the scrutiny of the laws, he would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.)

Though the ancient poet in Plutarch tells us we must not trouble the gods with our affairs because they take no heed of our angers and disputes, we can never enough decry the disorderly sallies of our minds.

Excellent memories are often coupled with feeble judgments.

We are all lumps, and of so various and inform a contexture, that every piece plays, every moment, its own game, and there is as much difference betwixt us and ourselves as betwixt us and others.

No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port.

Of all our infirmities the most savage is to despise our being.

I never rebel so much against France as not to regard Paris with a friendly eye; she has had my heart since my childhood.... I love her tenderly, even to her warts and her spots. I am French only by this great city: the glory of France, and one of the noblest ornaments of the world.

We undo ourselves by impatience. Misfortunes have their life and their limits their sickness and their health.

Without doubt, it is a delightful harmony when doing and saying go together.

The great and glorious masterpiece of man is how to live with a purpose.

All the fame I look for in life is to have lived it quietly.

...were these Essays of mine considerable enough to deserve a critical judgment, it might then, I think, fallout that they would not much take with common and vulgar capacities, nor be very acceptable to the singular and excellent sort of men; the first would not understand them enough, and the last too much; and so they may hover in the middle region.

It is a disaster that wisdom forbids you to be satisfied with yourself and always sends you away dissatisfied and fearful, whereas stubbornness and foolhardiness fill their hosts with joy and assurance.

If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.

If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth, is as much to say, as that he is brave towards God and a coward towards men.

There is no passion so much transports the sincerity of judgement as doth anger.

Our zeal works wonders, whenever it supports our inclination toward hatred, cruelty, ambition.

Desire and hope will push us on toward the future.

There never were two opinions alike in all the world no more than two hours or two grains: the most universal quality is diversity.

I know not what quintessence of all this mixture, which, seizing my whole will, carried it to plunge and lose itself in his, and that having seized his whole will, brought it back with equal concurrence and appetite to plunge and lose itself in mine.

No man is so exquisitely honest or upright in living but that ten times in his life he might not lawfully be hanged.

L'utilité du vivre n'est pas en l'espace: elle est en l'usage.

The most fruitful and natural exercise for our minds is, in my opinion, conversation.

The natural heat, say the good-fellows,first seats itself in the feet: that concerns infancy; thence it mounts into the middleregion, where it makes a long abode and produces, in my opinion, the sole true pleasures of human life; all other pleasures in comparison sleep; towards the end, like a vapor that still mounts upward, it arrives at the throat, where it makes its final residence, and concludes the progress.

I walk firmer and more secure up hill than down.

Speech belongs half to the speaker, half to the listener.

D'autant que nous avons cher, estre, et estre consiste en mouvement et action.

Fear desire hope still push us on toward the future.

Demetrius the grammarian finding in the temple of Delphos a knot of philosophers set chatting together, said to them, “Either I am much deceived,or by your cheerful and pleasant countenances, you are engaged in no very deep discourse.” To which one of them, Heracleon the Megarean, replied: “ ’Tis for such as are puzzled about inquiring whether the future tense of the verb Ballo be spelt with adouble L, or that hunt after the derivation of the comparatives Cheirou and Beltiou, and the superlatives Cheiriotou and Beliotou, to knit their brows whilst discoursing of their science; but as to philosophical discourses, they always divert and cheer up those that entertain them, and never deject them or make them sad.

I do not believe, from what I have been told about this people, that there is anything barbarous or savage about them, except that we all call barbarous anything that is contrary to our own habits.

Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens.

Nature a, (ce crains-je) elle mesme attaché à l'homme quelque instinct à l'inhumanité

Confidence in others' honesty is no light testimony of one's own integrity.

I find I am much prouder of the victory I obtain over myself, when, in the very ardor of dispute, I make myself submit to my adversary’s force of reason, than I am pleased with the victory I obtain over him through his weakness.

All is a-swarm with commentaries: of authors there is a dearth.

It is commonly seen by experience that excellent memories do often accompany weak judgements.

The greater part of the world's troubles are due to questions of grammar.

Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own.

We have nothing to fear but fear itself

We can be knowledgeable with another man's knowledge, but we can't be wise with another man's wisdom.

If you press me to say why I loved him I can say no more than it was because he was he and I was 1.

And in this we must for the most part entertain ourselves with ourselves, and so privately that no exotic knowledge or communication be admitted there; there to laugh and to talk, as if without wife, children, goods, train, or attendance, to the end that when it shall so fall out that we must lose any or all of these, it may be no new thing to be without them. We have a mind pliable in itself; that will be company; that has wherewithal to attack and to defend, to receive and to give: let us not then fear in this solitude to languish under an uncomfortable vacuity.

Valor is strength, not of legs and arms, but of heart and soul; it consists not in the worth of our horse or our weapons, but in our own.