Quotes from Michel de Montaigne

Lying is a terrible vice, it testifies that one despises God, but fears men.

There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.

Wisdom has its excesses, and has no less need of moderation than folly.

We can be knowledgable with other men's knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.

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

The truth of these days is not that which really is, but what every man persuades another man to believe.

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

To speak less of oneself than what one really is, is folly, not modesty; and to take that for current pay which is under a man's value, is pusillanimity and cowardice.

Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head.

The plague of man is the opinion of knowledge. That is why ignorance is so recommended by our religion as a quality suitable to belief and obedience.

Men are most apt to believe what they least understand.

It is not a mind, it is not a body that we educate, but it is a man, and we must not make two parts of him.

Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition.

Every man carries the entire form of human condition.

No two men ever judged alike of the same thing, and it is impossible to find two opinions exactly similar, not only in different men but in the same men at different times.

Men are tormented by the opinions they have of things, and not the things themselves.

I listen with attention to the judgment of all men; but so far as I can remember, I have followed none but my own.

The most unhappy and frail creatures are men and yet they are the proudest.

In nine lifetimes, you'll never know as much about your cat as your cat knows about you.

The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom...

Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.

Indeed, there is no such thing as an altogether ugly woman — or altogether beautiful.

Women when they marry buy a cat in the bag.

Women are not altogether in the wrong when they refuse the rules of life prescribed to the World, for men only have established them and without their consent.