Quotes from Michel de Montaigne

The customs and practices of life in society sweep us along.

What hits you affects you and wakes you up more then what pleases you.

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

If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth, is as much to say, as that he is brave towards God and a coward towards men.

Natural inclinations are assisted and reinforced by education, but they are hardly ever altered or overcome.

Human understanding is marvellously enlightened by daily conversation with men, for we are, otherwise, compressed and heaped up in ourselves, and have our sight limited to the length of our own noses.

Il n'est si homme de bien, qu'il mette à l'examen des loix toutes ses actions et pensées, qui ne soit pendable dix fois en sa vie. (There is no man so good that if he placed all his actions and thoughts under the scrutiny of the laws, he would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.)

Let death take me planting my cabbages, indifferent to him, and still less of my garden not being finished. (tr. Charles Cotton)

A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can.

The man who establishes his argument by noise and command knows that his reason is weak.

In general I ask for books that make use of learning, not those that build it up.

Si on me presse de dire pourquoi je l'aimais, je sens que cela ne se peut exprimer, qu'en répondant: « Parce que c'était lui; parce que c'était moi. »

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

I have not seen anywhere in the world a more obvious malformed person and miracle than myself. Through use and time we become conditioned to anything strange; but the more I become familiar with and know myself, the more my deformity amazes me and the less I understand myself.

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

When I am attacked by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books.They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.

There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.

La plus grande chose du monde, c'est de savoir être à soi.

We are never 'at home': we are always outside ourselves. Fear, desire, hope, impel us towards the future; they rob us of feelings and concern for what now is, in order to spend time over what will be – even when we ourselves shall be no more. [C] 'Calamitosus est animus futuri anxius' [Wretched is a mind anxious about the future].

The pettiest and slightest nuisances are the most acute; and as small letters hurt and tire the eyes most, so do trifling matters sting us most.

I never rebel so much against France as not to regard Paris with a friendly eye; she has had my heart since my childhood.... I love her tenderly, even to her warts and her spots. I am French only by this great city: the glory of France, and one of the noblest ornaments of the world.

Truth for us nowadays is not what is, but what others can be brought to accept: just as we call money not only legal tender but any counterfeit coins in circulation.

Death is not one of our social managements; it is a scene with one character.

This, reader, is an honest book...I want to appear in my simple, natural and everyday dress, without strain or artifice; for it is myself that I portray