Quotes from Michel de Montaigne

Experience has further taught me this, that we ruin ourselves by impatience.

Pride and curiosity are the two scourges of our souls. The latter prompts us to poke our noses into everything, and the former forbids us to leave anything unresolved and undecided.

Let every foot have its own shoe.

Every other knowledge is harmful to him who does not have knowledge of goodness.

Il n'est pas de chagrin qu'un livre ne puisse consoler.

The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mold. The same reason that makes us wrangle with a neighbor creates a war betwixt princes.

We need very strong ears to hear ourselves judged frankly, and because there are few who can endure frank criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to criticize us perform a remarkable act of friendship, for to undertake to wound or offend a man for his own good is to have a healthy love for him.

My life has been filled with terrible misfortune; most of which never happened.

Man (in good earnest) is a marvellous vain, fickle, and unstable subject, and on whom it is very hard to form any certain and uniform judgment.

I speak to the paper, as I speak to the first person I meet.

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

The most profound joy has more of gravity than of gaiety in it.

We must learn to suffer whatever we cannot avoid. Our life is composed, like the harmony of the world, of dischords as well as different tones, sweet and harsh, sharp and flat, soft and loud. If a musician liked only some of them, what could he sing? He has got to know how to use all of them and blend them together. So too must we with good and ill, which are of one substance with our life.

And therefore, Reader, I myself am the subject of my book: it is not reasonable that you should employ your leisure on a topic so frivolous and so vain. Therefore, Farewell:

When I play with my cat, how do I know that she is not playing with me rather than I with her?

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.

All we do is to look after the opinions and learning of others: we ought to make them our own.

My business is only to keep myself in motion, whilst motion pleases me; I only walk for the walk's sake.

We should tend our freedom wisely.

Women are not entirely wrong when they reject the moral rules proclaimed in society, since it is we men alone who have made them.

Excellent memories are often coupled with feeble judgments.

It is not reasonable that art should win the place of honor over our great and powerful mother Nature. We have so overloaded the beauty and richness of her works by our inventions that we have quite smothered her.

Can anything be imagined so ridiculous, that this miserable and wretched creature [man], who is not so much as master of himself, but subject to the injuries of all things, should call himself master and emperor of the world, of which he has not power to know the least part, much less to command the whole?

There is more ado to interpret interpretations than to interpret things, and more books upon books than upon any other subject; we do nothing but comment upon one another. Every place swarms with commentaries; of authors there is great scarcity.