Quotes from Michel de Montaigne

That is why Bias jested with those who were going through the perils of a great storm with him and calling on the gods for help: Shut up, he said, so that they do not realize that you are here with me.

To compensate a little for the treachery and weakness of my memory, so extreme that it has happened to me more than once to pick up again...books which I have read carefully a few years before. I have adopted the habit for some time now of adding at the end of each book the time I finished reading it and the judgment I have derived of it as a whole, so that this may represent to me at least the sense and general idea I had conceived of the author in reading it.

Men have seemed miraculous to the world, in whom their wives and valets have never seen anything even worth noticing. Few men have been admired by their own households.

The most beautiful lives, to my mind,are those that conform to the common human pattern, with order, but without miracle, and without eccentricity.

I know no marriages which fail and come to grief more quickly than those which are set on foot by beauty and amorous desire.

Wherever your life ends, it is all there. The utility of living consists not in the length of days, but in the use of time; a man may have lived long, and yet lived but a little. Make use of time while it is present with you. It depends upon your will, and not upon the number of days, to have a sufficient length of life.

Meditation is a powerful and full study as can effectually taste and employ themselves.

If you walk on stilts, you're still walking on your feet. If you sit on the highest throne in the world, you're still sitting on your ass.

La foiblesse de nostre condition, fait que les choses en leur simplicité et pureté naturelle ne puissent pas tomber en nostre usage... Nostre extreme volupté a quelque air de gemissement, et de plainte.

He lives happy and master of himself who can say as each day passes on, I have lived.

Glory and curiosity are the scourges of the soul; the last prompts us to thrust our noses into everything, the other forbids us to leave anything doubtful and undecided.

If virtue cannot shine bright, but by the conflict of contrary appetites, shall we then say that she cannot subsist without the assistance of vice, and that it is from her that she derives her reputation and honor?

Speech belongs half to the speaker, half to the listener.

A man of genius belongs to no period and no country. He speaks the language of nature, which is always everywhere the same.

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

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

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

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

Everyone calls barbarity what he is not accustomed to.

I speak the truth not so much as I want, but as much as I dare, and I dare a little more as I grow older.

A noble heart should not belie its thoughts; it wants to reveal itself even to its inmost depths. There everything is good, at least everything is human.

To an atheist all writings tend to atheism: he corrupts the most innocent matter with his own venom.

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

The time is now proper for us to reform backward; more by dissenting than by agreeing; by differing more than by consent.