Quotes from Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

I once took pleasure some place in seeing men, through piety, take a vow of ignorance, as of chastity, poverty, penitence. It is also castrating our disorderly appetites, to blunt that cupidity that pricks us on to the study of books, and to deprive the soul of that voluptuous complacency which tickles us with the notion of being learned.

He who fears he will suffer, already suffers because of his fear.

It is not without good reason said, that he who has not good memory should never take upon him the trade of lying

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be self-sufficient.

I study myself more than any other subject; it is my metaphysic, it is my physic.

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.

Scratching is one of nature's sweetest gratifications, and the one nearest at hand.

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

Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, inquiry the progress, ignorance the end.

The same reason that makes us chide and brawl and fall out with any of our neighbors, causeth a war to follow between Princes.

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

Obstinacy and heat in argument are surest proofs of folly. Is there anything so stubborn, obstinate, disdainful, contemplative, grave, or serious, as an ass?

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

It is not the want, but rather abundance that creates avarice.

The great and glorious masterpiece of man is how to live with purpose.

Obstinacy is the sister of constancy, at least in vigor and stability.

Anyone who does not feel sufficiently strong in memory should not meddle with lying.

Children's playthings are not sports and should be deemed as their most serious actions.

Coffee with a friend a day keeps the blues away

Even on the most exalted throne in the world we are only sitting on our own bottom.

Friendship is the highest degree of perfection in society.

God gives us our relatives- thank God we can choose our friends.

He who would teach men to die would at the same time teach them to live.