Quotes from Michel de Montaigne

The beauty of stature is the only beauty of men.

I consider myself an average man, except in the fact that I consider myself an average man.

There is nothing on which men are commonly more intent than on making a way for their opinions.

We do not correct the man we hang; we correct others by him.

The curiosity of knowing things has been given to man for a scourge.

A man has need of tough ears to hear himself fairly judged.

Men throw themselves on foreign assistances to spare their own, which, after all, are the only certain and sufficient ones.

Oh senseless man, who cannot possibly make a worm or a flea and yet will create Gods by the dozen!

A man may be humble through vainglory.

A man should keep for himself a little back shop, all his own, quite unadulterated, in which he establishes his true freedom and chief place of seclusion and solitude.

I say that male and female are cast in the same mold; except for education and habits, the difference is not great.

I look upon the too good opinion that man has of himself, as the nursing mother of all false opinions, both public and private.

Intelligence is required to be able to know that a man knows not.

The plague of man is boasting of his knowledge.

A man must either imitate the vicious or hate them.

Wine is the benevolent god, who gives back gaiety to men and restores youth to the old.

Now there cannot be first principles for men, unless the Divinity has revealed them; all the rest--beginning, middle, and end--isnothing but dreams and smoke.

Men of simple understanding, little inquisitive and little instructed, make good Christians.

A man may by custom fortify himself against pain, shame, and suchlike accidents; but as to death, we can experience it but once, and are all apprentices when we come to it

A man should think less of what he eats and more with whom he eats because no food is so satisfying as good company.

But the touch or company of any man whatsoever stirreth up their heat, which in their solitude was hushed and quiet, and lay as cinders raked up in ashes.

A well-bred man is always sociable and complaisant.

Men are nothing until they are excited.

Man is forming thousands of ridiculous relations between himself and God.