A Quote by Michel de Montaigne

We have so much ill fortune as inconstancy, or so much bad purpose as folly, we are not so full of evil as we are of inanity; we are not so wretched as we are base

Michel de Montaigne

Quote Topics

Bad Base Evil Folly Fortune Full Ill Inconstancy Much Purpose Wretched

Quote Author

Michel de Montaigne
French - Philosopher
February 28, 1533 - September 13, 1592

Nothing is more certain than uncertainties: / Fortune is full of fresh variety; / Constant in nothing but inconstancy.

Richard Barnfield

There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity; nor any which by ill management makes so contemptible a figure.

Jonathan Swift

It [the Civil War] was a heroic struggle; and, as is inevitable with all such struggles, it had also a dark and terrible side. Very much was done of good, and much also of evil; and, as was inevitable in such a period of revolution, often the same man did both good and evil. For our great good fortune as a nation, we, the people of the United States as a whole, can now afford to forget the evil, or, at least, to remember it without bitterness, and to fix our eyes with pride only on the good that was accomplished.

Theodore Roosevelt

Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all; too much cleverness and too much learning, accompanied with ill bringing-up, are far more fatal.

Plato

Incredulity is not wisdom, but the worst kind of folly. It is folly, because it causes ignorance and mistake, with all the consequents of these; and it is very bad, as being accompanied with disingenuity, obstinacy, rudeness, uncharitableness, and the like bad dispositions; from which credulity itself, the other extreme sort of folly, is exempt.

Isaac Barrow

If each man or woman could understand that every other human life is as full of sorrows, or joys, or base temptations, of heartaches and of remorse as his own . . . how much kinder, how much gentler he would be.

William Allen White

There is nothing so subject to the inconstancy of fortune as war.

Miguel de Cervantes

To speak well of a base man is much the same as speaking ill of a good man.

Leonardo da Vinci

There is very much in the world that is bad. But usually the attempt to defeat evil engenders more evil. I advise you to do good; that is the only way to win the victory.

Sergei Lukyanenko

There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it ill behooves any of us to find fault with the rest of us.

James Truslow Adams

There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it ill behaves any of us to find fault with the rest of us.

James Truslow Adams

Psychology doesn't like to talk about evil. It likes to talk about bad childhoods. But I very much believe that some people are evil and motivation is not necessary for evil.

Laura Schlessinger

Why was this heart of mine formed with so much sensibility! Or why not my fortune adapted to its impulses! Tenderness without a capacity of relieving only makes the man who feels it more wretched than the object which sues for assistance.