Quotes from Michel de Montaigne

there is nothing we can do longer than think, no activity to which we can devote ourselves more regularly nor more easily:

No man is so exquisitely honest or upright in living, but that ten times in his life he might not lawfully be hanged.

The usefulness of living lies not in duration but in what you make of it. Some have lived long and lived little. See to it while you are still here. Whether you have lived enough depends not on a count of years but on your will.

that it was an advantage to him to be interrupted in speaking, and that his adversaries were afraid to nettle him, lest his anger should redouble his eloquence.

Kings and philosophers shit, and so do ladies. Even on the highest throne in the world, we are seated still upon our arses.

If any one be in rapture with his own knowledge, looking only on those below him, let him but turn his eye upward towards past ages, and his pride will be abated, when he shall there find so many thousand wits that trample him under foot.

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself, and if they will not adapt to me, I adapt to them.

I...think it much more supportable to be always alone, than never to be so.

If I can, I will prevent my death from saying anything not first said by my life.

The other two are rich and noble; examples of virtue rarely make their home among people like that.

Those who shake the State are easily the first to be engulfed in its destruction. The fruits of dissension are not gathered by the one who began it: he stirs and troubles the waters for other men to fish in.

Whatever it be, whether art or nature, that has inscribed in us this condition of living by reference to others, it does us much more harm than good. We defraud ourselves out of what is actually useful to us in order to make appearances conform to common opinion. We care less about the real truth of our inner selves than about how we are known to the public.

It is quite normal to see good intentions, when not carried out with moderation, urging men to actions which are truly vicious.

L'honneste est stable et permanent.

J'accuse toute violence en l'education d'une ame tendre, qu'on dresse pour l'honneur, et la liberté.

Não há nada tão belo e legítimo quanto ser um homem de forma boa e adequada, nem conhecimento tão difícil de adquirir quanto o conhecimento de como viver esta vida bem e com naturalidade; e a mais bárbara de nossas doenças é desprezar o nosso ser.

The contradictions of judgments, then, neither offend nor alter, they only rouse and exercise me. We evade correction, whereas we ought to offer and present ourselves to it, especially when it appears in the form of conference, and not of authority.

There is nothing more unsociable than man, and nothing more sociable: unsociable by his vice, sociable by his nature.

I myself am more ready to distort a fine saying in order to patch it on to me than to distort the thread of my argument to go in search of one. [A]

A man with nothing to lend should refrain from borrowing.

When I am playing with my cat, who knows whether she have more sport in dallying with me than I have in gaming with her?

We take our fetters with us; our freedom is not total: we still turn our gaze towards the things we have left behind; our imagination is full of them.

For being the more learned, they are none the less fools.

Ambition is not a vice of little people.