Top 77 Michel de Montaigne Quotes

The thing I fear most is fear.

An untempted woman cannot boast of her chastity.

I quote others only in order the better to express myself.

If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not even think of themselves.

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.

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

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.

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

A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.

The finest souls are those that have the most variety and suppleness.

The soul which has no fixed purpose in life is lost; to be everywhere, is to be nowhere.

Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition.

In nine lifetimes, you’ll never know as much about your cat as your cat knows about you.

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

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.

Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.

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.

Any person of honor chooses rather to lose his honor than to lose his conscience.

Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of soul, impossible.

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.

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

Few men have been admired of their familiars.

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

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

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

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.

It is an absolute and virtually divine perfection to know how to enjoy our being rightfully.

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

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.

There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.

Unless a man feels he has a good enough memory, he should never venture to lie.

We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.

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.

The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.

Confidence in the goodness of another is good proof of one’s own goodness.

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.

How many condemnations I have witnessed more criminal than the crime!

Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head.

No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port.

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

It should be noted that children at play are not playing about; their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity.

The way of the world is to make laws, but follow custom.

Virtue rejects facility to be her companion. She requires a craggy, rough and thorny way.

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

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.

Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.

One may be humble out of pride.

Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.

When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her.

Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle; but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages.

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

He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.

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

Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.

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.

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.

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

I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better.

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

I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.

Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky.

There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.

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

No pleasure has any savor for me without communication.

Let us not be ashamed to speak what we shame not to think.

A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself.

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

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

A straight oar looks bent in the water. What matters is not merely that we see things but how we see them.

The beautiful souls are they that are universal, open, and ready for all things.

The world is all a carcass and vanity, The shadow of a shadow, a play And in one word, just nothing.

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.

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

I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie.

Ambition is not a vice of little people.

There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.

Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.