Quotes from Michel de Montaigne

We have more poets than judges and interpreters of poetry. It is easier to write an indifferent poem that to understand a good one.

When all is summed up, a man never speaks of himself without loss; his accusations of himself are always believed; his praises never.

The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.

On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.

I do not care so much what I am to others as I care what I am to myself.

I quote others only in order the better to express myself.

If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.

If I speak of myself in different ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways.

Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own.

I am afraid that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, and that we have more curiosity than understanding. We grasp at everything, but catch nothing except wind.

There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.

Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.

Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.

If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.

I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.

To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind for it.

Obsession is the wellspring of genius and madness.

I find I am much prouder of the victory I obtain over myself, when, in the very ardor of dispute, I make myself submit to my adversary's force of reason, than I am pleased with the victory I obtain over him through his weakness.

Combien de choses nous servoyent hier d'articles de foy, qui nous sont fables aujourd'huy? How many things served us yesterday for articles of faith, which today are fables for us?

There were many terrible things in my life and most of them never happened.

Let us give Nature a chance; she knows her business better than we do.

Off I go, rummaging about in books for sayings which please me.

To begin depriving death of its greatest advantage over us, let us adopt a way clean contrary to that common one; let us deprive death of its strangeness, let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death... We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere." "To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.

To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquility in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately. All other things, ruling, hoarding, building, are only little appendages and props, at most.