Michel de Montaigne – 40 Quotes

Share the love

 

40 Quotes by Michel de Montaigne

 

My trade and art is to live.

– Michel de Montaigne


The thing I fear most is fear.

– Michel de Montaigne


It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.

– Michel de Montaigne


Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.

– Michel de Montaigne


The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.

– Michel de Montaigne


There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.

– Michel de Montaigne


There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.

– Michel de Montaigne


No pleasure has any savor for me without communication.

– Michel de Montaigne


Marriage, a market which has nothing free but the entrance.

– Michel de Montaigne


It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.

– Michel de Montaigne


There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge.

– Michel de Montaigne


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

– Michel de Montaigne


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

– Michel de Montaigne


The ceaseless labour of your life is to build the house of death.

– Michel de Montaigne


Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.

– Michel de Montaigne


The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.

– Michel de Montaigne


Stubborn and ardent clinging to one’s opinion is the best proof of stupidity.

– Michel de Montaigne


There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom.

– Michel de Montaigne


How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables.

– Michel de Montaigne


Let us permit nature to have her way. She understands her business better than we do.

– Michel de Montaigne


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

– Michel de Montaigne


We can be knowledgable with other men’s knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men’s wisdom.

– Michel de Montaigne


Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one’s own inner self.

– Michel de Montaigne


Those who have compared our life to a dream were right… we were sleeping wake, and waking sleep.

– Michel de Montaigne


If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.

– Michel de Montaigne


I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.

– Michel de Montaigne


I speak the truth not so much as I would, but as much as I dare, and I dare a little more as I grow older.

– Michel de Montaigne


There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.

– Michel de Montaigne


For truly it is to be noted, that children’s plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.

– Michel de Montaigne


Marriage is like a cage one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.

– Michel de Montaigne


The confidence in another man’s virtue is no light evidence of a man’s own, and God willingly favors such a confidence.

– Michel de Montaigne


I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind – and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.

– Michel de Montaigne


Covetousness is both the beginning and the end of the devil’s alphabet – the first vice in corrupt nature that moves, and the last which dies.

– Michel de Montaigne


I put forward formless and unresolved notions, as do those who publish doubtful questions to debate in the schools, not to establish the truth but to seek it.

– 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 value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them… Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.

– 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


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


There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.

– Michel de Montaigne


Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words azimuth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.

– Michel de Montaigne


Leave a Reply