Top 988 Quotes & Sayings by Michel de Montaigne - Page 16

Truly man is a marvelously vain, diverse, and undulating object. It is hard to found any constant and uniform judgment on him.

For among other things he had been counseled to bring me to love knowledge and duty by my own choice, without forcing my will, and to educate my soul entirely through gentleness and freedom.

Each person calls barbarism whatever is not his or her own practice.... We may call Cannibals barbarians, in respect to the rulesof reason, but not in respect to ourselves, who surpass them in every kind of barbarity.

Life in itself is neither good nor evil, it is the place of good and evil, according to what you make it.

Live as long as you please, you will strike nothing off the time you will have to spend dead.

The shortest way to arrive at glory should be to do that for conscience which we do for glory. And the virtue of Alexander appears to me with much less vigor in his theater than that of Socrates in his mean and obscure. I can easily conceive Socrates in the place of Alexander, but Alexander in that of Socrates I cannot.

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.

It takes so much to be a king that he exists only as such. That extraneous glare that surrounds him hides him and conceals him from us; our sight breaks and is dissipated by it being filled and arrested by this strong light.

My opinion is that we must lend ourselves to others and give ourselves only to ourselves. If my will happened to be prone to mortgage and attach itself, I would not last: I am too tender, both by nature and by practice.

An orator of past times declared that his calling was to make small things appear to be grand.

He that first likened glory to a shadow did better than he was aware of. They are both of them things excellently vain. Glory also, like a shadow, goes sometimes before the body, and sometimes in length infinitely exceeds it.

We cannot fail in following nature.

Were I to live my life over again, I should live it just as I have done. I neither complain of the past, nor do I fear the future.

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

The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use; some men have lived long, and lived little; attend to it while you are in it. It lies in your will, not in the number of years, for you to have lived enough.

Arts and sciences are not cast in a mould, but are found and perfected by degrees, by often handling and polishing.

There is nothing so noble and so right as to play our human life well and fitly, nor anything so difficult to learn as how to livethis life well and according to Nature.

What am I to choose? "Choose what you please, as long as you choose." There you have a foolish answer, which seems to be the outcome, however, of all Dogmatism, which will not allow us to be ignorant of that which we are ignorant.

The most beautiful lives, to my mind, are those that conform to the common human pattern, with order, but without miracle and without eccentricity.

As by some might be saide of me: that here I have but gathered a nosegay of strange floures, and have put nothing of mine unto it, but the thred to binde them. Certes, I have given unto publike opinion, that these borrowed ornaments accompany me; but I meane not they should cover or hide me.

Nature has with a Motherly Tenderness observed this, that the Action she has enjoyned us for our Necessity should be also pleasant to us, and invites us to them, not only by Reason, but also by Appetite: and ?tis Injustice to infringe her Laws.

In truth, the care and expense of our fathers aims only at furnishing our heads with knowledge; of judgement and virtue, little news.

One man may have some special knowledge at first-hand about the character of a river or a spring, who otherwise knows only what everyone else knows. Yet to give currency to this shred of information, he will undertake to write on the whole science of physics. From this fault many great troubles spring.

How many quarrels, and how important, has the doubt as to the meaning of this syllable "Hoc" produced for the world!

I honor most those to whom I show least honor; and where my soul moves with great alacrity, I forget the proper steps of ceremony.

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

The only good histories are those that have been written by the persons themselves who commanded in the affairs whereof they write.

Old age is a lease nature only signs as a particular favor, and it may be, to one, only in the space of two or three ages; and then with a pass to boot, to carry him through, all the traverses and difficulties she has strewed in the way of his long career.

Tis well for old age that it is always accompanied with want of perception, ignorance, and a facility of being deceived. For should we see how we are used and would not acquiesce, what would become of us?

Wisdom has its excesses, and has no less need of moderation than folly.

There is nothing which so poisons princes as flattery, nor anything whereby wicked men more easily obtain credit and favor with them.

Health is a precious thing, and the only one, in truth, meriting that a man should lay out not only his time, sweat, labor and goods, but also life itself to obtain it.

Might I have had my own will, I would not have married Wisdom herself, if she would have had me.

Whenever a new discovery is reported to the world, they say first, It is probably not true, Then after, when the truth of the new proposition has been demonstrated beyond question, they say, Yes, it may be true, but it is not important. Finally, when sufficient time has elapsed to fully evidence its importance, they say, Yes, surely it is important, but it is no longer new.

There is no passion that so much transports men from their right judgments as anger. No one would demur upon punishing a judge with death who should condemn a criminal upon the account of his own choler; why then should fathers and pedants be any more allowed to whip and chastise children in their anger? It is then no longer correction bat revenge. Chastisement is instead of physic to children; and should we suffer a physician who should be animated against and enraged at his patient?

To behave rightly, we ourselves should never lay a hand on our servants as long as our anger lasts. Things will seem different to us when we have quieted and cooled down.

When I express my opinions it is so as to reveal the measure of my sight not the measure of the thing.

Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre of sentiment and resolution, in the suffering of human accidents.

In plain Truth, it is no Want, but rather Abundance that creates Avarice.

[Marriage] happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.

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

Those who make a practice of comparing human actions are never so perplexed as when they try to see them as a whole and in the same light; for they commonly contradict each other so strangely that it seems impossible that they have come from the same shop.

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.

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.

I enjoy books as misers enjoy treasures, because I know I can enjoy them whenever I please.

Nor is it enough to toughen up his soul; you must also toughen up his muscles.

Why do people respect the package rather than the man?

We imagine much more appropriately an artisan on his toilet seat or on his wife than a great president, venerable by his demeanorand his ability. It seems to us that they do not stoop from their lofty thrones even to live.

Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy; research, the progress; ignorance, the end. There is, by heavens, a strong and generous kind of ignorance that yields nothing, for honour and courage, to knowledge: an ignorance to conceive which needs no less knowledge than to conceive knowledge.

It is probable that the principal credit of miracles, visions, enchantments, and such extraordinary occurrences comes from the power of imagination, acting principally upon the minds of the common people, which are softer.

I have gathered a posy of other men?s flowers and only the thread that bonds them is my own.

I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided if greater pains be the consequence, and pains to be coveted that will terminate in greater pleasures.

In my youth I studied for ostentation; later, a little to gain wisdom; now, for recreation; never for gain.

While our pulse beats and we feel emotion, let us put off the business. Things will truly seem different to us when we have quieted and cooled down. It is passion that is in command at first, it is passion that speaks, it is not we ourselves.

Painting myself for others, I have painted my inward self with colors clearer than my original ones. I have no more made my book than my book has made me--a book consubstantial with its author, concerned with my own self, an integral part of my life; not concerned with some third-hand, extraneous purpose, like all other books.

I have here only made a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the thread that tied them together.

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

Some men seem remarkable to the world in whom neither their wives nor their valets saw anything extraordinary. Few men have been admired by their servants.

It needs courage to be afraid.

Others form man; I tell of him, and portray a particular one, very ill-formed, whom I should really make very different from whathe is if I had to fashion him over again. But now it is done.