Top 988 Quotes & Sayings by Michel de Montaigne - Page 2
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a French philosopher Michel de Montaigne.
Last updated on December 25, 2024.
Unless a man feels he has a good enough memory, he should never venture to lie.
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.
I set forth a humble and inglorious life; that does not matter. You can tie up all moral philosophy with a common and private life just as well as with a life of richer stuff. Each man bears the entire form of man's estate.
The entire lower world was created in the likeness of the higher world. All that exists in the higher world appears like an image in this lower world; yet all this is but One.
The public weal requires that men should betray, and lie, and massacre.
Love to his soul gave eyes; he knew things are not as they seem. The dream is his real life; the world around him is the dream.
'Tis the sharpness of our mind that gives the edge to our pains and pleasures.
I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.
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.
If a man urge me to tell wherefore I loved him, I feel it cannot be expressed but by answering: Because it was he, because it was myself.
I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie.
Virtue rejects facility to be her companion. She requires a craggy, rough and thorny way.
If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because it was I.
The beautiful souls are they that are universal, open, and ready for all things.
In nine lifetimes, you'll never know as much about your cat as your cat knows about you.
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.
The confidence in another man's virtue is no light evidence of a man's own, and God willingly favors such a confidence.
The way of the world is to make laws, but follow custom.
For truly it is to be noted, that children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.
Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.
Let us not be ashamed to speak what we shame not to think.
Any person of honor chooses rather to lose his honor than to lose his conscience.
How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables.
It is a monstrous thing that I will say, but I will say it all the same: I find in many things more restraint and order in my morals than in my opinions, and my lust less depraved than my reason.
It is an absolute and virtually divine perfection to know how to enjoy our being rightfully.
Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.
Marriage, a market which has nothing free but the entrance.
I have often seen people uncivil by too much civility, and tiresome in their courtesy.
We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.
There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom.
It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.
The worst of my actions or conditions seem not so ugly unto me as I find it both ugly and base not to dare to avouch for them.
A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can.
How many condemnations I have witnessed more criminal than the crime!
It is the mind that maketh good or ill, That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor.
The finest souls are those that have the most variety and suppleness.
We are Christians by the same title as we are natives of Perigord or Germany.
Wit is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not how to use it discreetly.
If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not even think of themselves.
When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her.
I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better.
I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself, and not by borrowing.
There is perhaps no more obvious vanity than to write of it so vainly.
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.
There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.
An untempted woman cannot boast of her chastity.
Few men have been admired of their familiars.
Only the fools are certain and assured.
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
Every movement reveals us.
Sometimes it is a good choice not to choose at all.
Man is quite insane. He wouldn?t know how to create a maggot, and he creates Gods by the dozen.
Every man has within himself the entire human condition
All permanent decisions are made in a temporary state of mind.
The truth of these days is not that which really is, but what every man persuades another man to believe.
The only thing certain is nothing is certain.
A man must always study, but he must not always go to school: what a contemptible thing is an old abecedarian!
The pleasantest things in the world are pleasant thoughts, and the great art of life is to have as many of them as possible.
We must learn to endure what we cannot avoid. Our life is composed, like the harmony of the world, of contrary things, also of different tones, sweet and harsh, sharp and flat, soft and loud. If a musician liked only one kind, what would he have to say?
Don't discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose; if you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved.
Related Authors
Alan Watts Quotes
English
Philosopher
Albert Camus Quotes
French
Philosopher
Aristotle Quotes
Greek
Philosopher
Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes
German
Philosopher
Blaise Pascal Quotes
French
Philosopher
Confucius Quotes
Chinese
Philosopher
Francis Bacon Quotes
English
Philosopher
Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes
German
Philosopher
Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes
Indian
Philosopher
Laozi Quotes
Chinese
Philosopher
Plato Quotes
Greek
Philosopher
Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
American
Philosopher
Seneca the Younger Quotes
Roman
Philosopher
Soren Kierkegaard Quotes
Danish
Philosopher
Thomas Carlyle Quotes
Scottish
Philosopher
William James Quotes
American
Philosopher