Top 988 Quotes & Sayings by Michel de Montaigne - Page 13

The clatter of arms drowns out the voice of law.

Whom conscience, ne'er asleep, Wounds with incessant strokes, not loud, but deep.

Oh, what a valiant faculty is hope.

We must reserve a back shop all our own entirely free, in which to establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and solitude.

The whole idea we have for their chastity is ridiculous. They would have to become numb and invisible to please us. I don't know whether the exploits of Alexander and Caesar really surpass the resolution of a beautiful young woman, bred up in the light and commerce of our society, who still keeps herself whole. There is no doing so hard as not doing.

In my opinion it is the happy living, and not, as Antisthenes said, the happy lying, in which human happiness consists.

Knowledge is an excellent drug; but no drug has virtue enough to preserve itself from corruption and decay, if the vessel be tainted and impure wherein it is put to keep.

Peoples nurtured on freedom and self-government judge any other form of polity to be deformed and unnatural. Those who are used to monarchy do the same .

Other passions have objects to flatter them, and seem to content and satisfy them for a while; there is power in ambition, pleasure in luxury, and pelf in covetousness; but envy can gain nothing but vexation.

And therefore, Reader, I myself am the subject of my book: it is not reasonable that you should employ your leisure on a topic so frivolous and so vain. Therefore, Farewell.

There is nothing in which a horse's power is better revealed than in a neat, clean stop.

But as Nature is the best guide, teaching must be the development of natural inclinations, for which purpose the teacher must watch his pupil and listen to him, not continually bawl words into his ears as if pouring water into a funnel. Good teaching will come from a mind well made rather than well filled.

There is no virtue which does not rejoice a well-descended nature; there is a kind of I know not what congratulation in well-doing, that gives us an inward satisfaction, and a certain generous boldness that accompanies a good conscience.

A man never speaks of himself without losing something. What he says in his disfavor is always beleived, but when he commends himself, he arouses mistrust.

The only good histories are those written by those who had command in the events they describe.

Women when they marry buy a cat in the bag.

Our religion is made to eradicate vices, instead it encourages them, covers them, and nurtures them.

No spiritual mind remains within itself; it is always aspiring and going beyond its own strength.

[I]n my country, when they would say a man has no sense, they say, such an one has no memory; and when I complain of the defect of mine, they do not believe me, and reprove me, as though I accused myself for a fool: not discerning the difference betwixt memory and understanding, which is to make matters still worse for me. But they do me wrong; for experience, rather, daily shows us, on the contrary, that a strong memory is commonly coupled with infirm judgment.

"Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation." -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 I.

I may indeed very well happen to contradict myself; but truth, as Demades said, I do not contradict.

Can anything be imagined so ridiculous that this miserable and wretched creature, who is not so much as master of himself, but subject to the injuries of all things, should call himself master and emperor of the world, of which he has not power to know the least part, much less to command the whole?

Obstinacy and contention are common qualities, most appearing in, and best becoming, a mean and illiterate soul.

When we see a man with bad shoes, we say it is no wonder, if he is a shoemaker.

Let every foot have its own shoe.

We have power over nothing except our will.

If atoms do, by chance, happen to combine themselves into so many shapes, why have they never combined together to form a house or a slipper? By the same token, why do we not believe that if innumerable letters of the Greek alphabet were poured all over the market-place they would eventually happen to form the text of the Iliad?

We every day and every hour say things of another that we might more properly say of ourselves, could we but apply our observations to our own concerns.

Like the watermen who advance forward while they look backward.

Perhaps it is not without reason that we attribute facility in belief and conviction to simplicity and ignorance; for it seems to me I once learned that belief was sort of an impression made on our mind, and that the softer it is the less resistant t.

A young man ought to cross his own rules, to awake his vigor, and to keep it from growing faint and rusty. And there is no course of life so weak and sottish as that which is carried on by rule and discipline.

Persons of mean understandings, not so inquisitive, nor so well instructed, are made good Christians, and by reverence and obedience, implicity believe, and abide by their belief.

The religion of my doctor or my lawyer cannot matter. That consideration has nothing in common with the functions of the friendship they owe me.

Lying is a disgraceful vice, and one that Plutarch paints in most disgraceful colors, when he says that it is "affording testimony that one first despises God, and then fears men." It is not possible more happily to describe its horrible, disgusting, and abandoned nature; for can we imagine anything more vile than to be cowards with regard to men, and brave with regard to God.

To how many blockheads of my time has a cold and taciturn demeanor procured the credit of prudence and capacity!

Every period of life has its peculiar prejudices; whoever saw old age, that did not applaud the past, and condemn the present times?

Man (in good earnest) is a marvellous vain, fickle, and unstable subject, and on whom it is very hard to form any certain and uniform judgment.

For me, who only desire to become wise, not more learned or eloquent, these logical or Aristotelian dispositions of parts are of no use.

Disappointment and feebleness imprint upon us a cowardly and valetudinarian virtue.

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.

No man is a hero to his own valet.

Those sciences which govern the morals of mankind, such as Theology and Philosophy, make everything their concern: no activity is so private or so secret as to escape their attention or their jurisdiction.

The easy, gentle, and sloping path . . . is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road.

There is no desire more natural than the desire of knowledge. (Il n'est desir plus naturel que le desir de connaissance)

That is why Bias jested with those who were going through the perils of a great storm with him and calling on the gods for help: "Shut up," he said, "so that they do not realize that you are here with me.

The receipts of cookery are swelled to a volume, but a good stomach excels them all; to which nothing contributes more than industry and temperance.

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.

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.

I love a friendship that flatters itself in the sharpness and vigor of its communications.

Ambition sufficiently plagues her proselytes, by keeping themselves always in show, like the statue of a public place.

If love and ambition should be in equal balance, and come to jostle with equal force, I make no doubt but that the last would win the prize.

If not for that of conscience, yet at least for ambition's sake, let us reject ambition, let us disdain that thirst of honor and renown, so low and mendicant; that it makes us beg it of all sorts of people.

We call comeliness a mischance in the first respect, which belongs principally to the face.

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.

Who is only good that others may know it, and that he may be the better esteemed when 'tis known, who will do well but upon condition that his virtue may be known to men, is one from whom much service is not to be expected.

To divert myself from a troublesome fancy, it is but to run to my books; they presently fix me to them, and drive the other out of my thoughts, and do not mutiny to see that I have only recourse to them for want of other more, real, natural, and lively conveniences; they always receive me with the same kindness.

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

Taking it all in all, I find it is more trouble to watch after money than to get it.

Learning is not to be tacked to the mind, but we must fuse and blend them together, not merely giving the mind a slight tincture, but a thorough and perfect dye. And if we perceive no evident change and improvement, it would be better to leave it alone; learning is a dangerous weapon, and apt to wound its master if it be wielded by a feeble hand, and by one not well acquainted with its use.

It is putting a very high price on one's conjectures to have someone roasted alive on their account.