Michel de Montaigne
How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables.Collection: Faith
If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.Collection: Valentines
We can be knowledgable with other men's knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.Collection: Knowledge
In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page- boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk - they are all part of the curriculum.Collection: Education
There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.Collection: Alone
There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge.Collection: Knowledge
If you don't know how to die, don't worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don't bother your head about it.Collection: Death
It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.Collection: Intelligence
A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.Collection: Marriage
Those who have compared our life to a dream were right... we were sleeping wake, and waking sleep.Collection: Dreams
Marriage, a market which has nothing free but the entrance.Collection: Marriage
Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle; but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages.Collection: Legal
The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.Collection: Wisdom
Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.Collection: Marriage
If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.Collection: Marriage
Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.Collection: Courage
There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom.Collection: Family
Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words azimuth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.Collection: Sports
Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.Collection: Future
I speak the truth not so much as I would, but as much as I dare, and I dare a little more as I grow older.Collection: Truth
Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.Collection: Brainy
Let us permit nature to have her way. She understands her business better than we do.Collection: Business
Confidence in the goodness of another is good proof of one's own goodness.Collection: Good
Stubborn and ardent clinging to one's opinion is the best proof of stupidity.Collection: Best
There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.Collection: Failure
It is the mind that maketh good or ill, That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor.Collection: Wisdom
Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky.Collection: Chance
Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.Collection: Age
I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.Collection: Education
My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.Collection: Life
For truly it is to be noted, that children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.Collection: Sports
My trade and art is to live.Collection: Life
The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.Collection: Courage
There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.Collection: Fear
It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.Collection: Death
No pleasure has any savor for me without communication.Collection: Communication
No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port.Collection: Leadership
The ceaseless labour of your life is to build the house of death.
The thing I fear most is fear.
Virtue rejects facility to be her companion. She requires a craggy, rough and thorny way.
Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition.
Covetousness is both the beginning and the end of the devil's alphabet - the first vice in corrupt nature that moves, and the last which dies.
A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can.
Love to his soul gave eyes; he knew things are not as they seem. The dream is his real life; the world around him is the dream.
The confidence in another man's virtue is no light evidence of a man's own, and God willingly favors such a confidence.
Few men have been admired of their familiars.
The public weal requires that men should betray, and lie, and massacre.
The way of the world is to make laws, but follow custom.
How many condemnations I have witnessed more criminal than the crime!
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.