Quotes from Michel de Montaigne

It is setting a high value upon our opinions to roast men and women alive on account of them.

Women are more susceptible to pain than to pleasure.

It costs an unreasonable woman no more to pass over one reason than another; they cherish themselves most where they are most wrong.

The most useful and honorable science and occupation for a woman is the science of housekeeping. I know some that are miserly, very few that are good managers.

A woman is no sooner ours than we are no longer hers.

I put forward formless and unresolved notions, as do those who publish doubtful questions to debate in the schools, not to establish the truth but to seek it.

The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.

For truly it is to be noted, that children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.

Take care that old age does not wrinkle your spirit even more than your face.

Is it not a noble farce, wherein kings, republics, and emperors have for so many ages played their parts, and to which the whole vast universe serves for a theatre?

There is no passion so much transports the sincerity of judgment as doth anger

I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.

... whoever believes anything esteems that it is a work of charity to persuade another of it.

To behave rightly, we ourselves should never lay a hand on our servants as long as our anger lasts. Things will seem different to us when we have quieted and cooled down.

No passion disturbs the soundness of our judgement as anger does.

There is no passion so much transports the sincerity of judgement as doth anger.

He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.

The diversity of physical arguments and opinions embraces all sorts of methods.

Difficulty is a coin the learned make use of like jugglers, to conceal the inanity of their art.

The art of dining well is no slight art, the pleasure not a slight pleasure; neither the greatest captains nor the greatest philosophers have disdained the use or science of eating well.

My trade and art is to live.

Arts and sciences are not cast in a mould, but are found and perfected by degrees, by often handling and polishing.

A wellborn mind that is practiced in dealing with people makes itself thoroughly agreeable by itself. Art is nothing else but thelist and record of the productions of such minds.

I am much afraid that we shall have very greatly hastened the decline and ruin of the New World by our contagion, and that we willhave sold it our opinions and our arts very dear.