Michel de Montaigne
Presumption is our natural and original malady. The most vulnerable and frail of all creatures is man, and at the same time the most arrogant.Collection: Men
It is a human tendency "to measure truth and error by our capacity."Collection: Reality
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.Collection: Eye
So it is with minds. Unless you keep them busy with some definite subject that will bridle and control them, they throw themselves in disorder hither and yon in the vague field of imagination... And there is no mad or idle fancy that they do not bring forth in the agitation.Collection: Mad
We are more unhappy to see people ahead of us than happy to see people behind us.Collection: Sad
People of our time are so formed for agitation and ostentation that goodness, moderation, equability, constancy, and such quiet and obscure qualities are no longer felt.Collection: Business
On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.Collection: Inspiration
The good opinion of the vulgar is injurious.Collection: Opinion
My art and profession is to live.Collection: Life
Death pays all debts.Collection: Death
Life itself is neither a good nor an evil: life is where good or evil find a place, depending on how you make it for them.Collection: Evil
The lack of wealth is easily repaired but the poverty of the soul is irreplaceable.Collection: Inspirational
Is it not better to remain in suspense than to entangle yourself in the many errors that the human fancy has produced? Is it not better to suspend your convictions than to get mixed up in these seditious and quarrelsome divisions?Collection: Errors
No pleasure is fully delightful without communications, and no delight absolute except imparted.Collection: Communication
A man must not always tell all, for that be folly; but what a man says should be what he thinks.Collection: Truth
A man is not hurt so much by what happens, as by his opinion of what happens.Collection: Gratitude
We are all of us richer than we think we are; but we are taught to borrow and to beg, and brought up more to make use of what is another's than of our own.Collection: Thinking
Happiness involves working toward meaningful goals.Collection: Happiness
Men are tormented by the opinions they have of things, and not the things themselves.Collection: Men
All permanent decisions are made in a temporary state of mind.Collection: Decision
We endeavor more that men should speak of us, than how and what they speak, and it sufficeth us that our name run in men's mouths, in what manner soever. It stemma that to be known is in some sort to have life and continuance in other men's keeping.Collection: Running
How many quarrels, and how important, has the doubt as to the meaning of this syllable "Hoc" produced for the world!Collection: Doubt
Have you known how to take rest? You have done more than he who hath taken empires and cities.Collection: Taken
The receipts of cookery are swelled to a volume, but a good stomach excels them all; to which nothing contributes more than industry and temperance.Collection: Volume
We ought to love temperance for itself, and in obedience to God who has commanded it and chastity; but what I am forced to by catarrhs, or owe to the stone, is neither chastity nor temperance.Collection: Stones
An ancient father says that a dog we know is better company than a man whose language we do not understand.Collection: Dog
Rash and incessant scolding runs into custom and renders itself despised.Collection: Running
When we see a man with bad shoes, we say it is no wonder, if he is a shoemaker.Collection: Men
Once you have decided to keep a certain pile, it is no longer yours; for you can't spend it.Collection: Certain
Glory consists of two parts: the one in setting too great a value upon ourselves, and the other in setting too little a value upon others.Collection: Two
He that I am reading seems always to have the most force.Collection: Reading
There is no virtue which does not rejoice a well-descended nature; there is a kind of I know not what congratulation in well-doing, that gives us an inward satisfaction, and a certain generous boldness that accompanies a good conscience.Collection: Congratulations
What harm cause not those huge draughts or pictures which wanton youth with chalk or coals draw in each passage, wall or stairs of our great houses, whence a cruel contempt of our natural store is bred in them?Collection: Wall
We cannot do without it, and yet we disgrace and vilify the same. It may be compared to a cage, the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair to get out.Collection: Marriage
I see several animals that live so entire and perfect a life, some without sight, others without hearing: who knows whether to us also one, two, or three, or many other senses, may not be wanting?Collection: Animal
It is much more easy to accuse the one sex than to excuse the other.Collection: Sex
Most men are rich in borrowed sufficiency: a man may very well say a good thing, give a good answer, cite a good sentence, without at all seeing the force of either the one or the other.Collection: Men
Men ... are not agreed about any one thing, not even that heaven is over our heads.Collection: Men
Their [the Skeptics'] way of speaking is: "I settle nothing. . . . I do not understand it. . . . Nothing seems true that may not seem false." Their sacramental word is . . . , which is to say, I suspend my judgment.Collection: Understanding
Traveling through the world produces a marvelous clarity in the judgment of men. We are all of us confined and enclosed within ourselves, and see no farther than the end of our nose. This great world is a mirror where we must see ourselves in order to know ourselves. There are so many different tempers, so many different points of view, judgments, opinions, laws and customs to teach us to judge wisely on our own, and to teach our judgment to recognize its imperfection and natural weakness.Collection: Men
This idea is more surely understood by interrogation; WHAT DO I KNOW? which I bear as my motto with the emblem of a pair of scales.Collection: Knowledge
The same reason that makes us chide and brawl and fall out with any of our neighbors, causeth a war to follow between Princes.Collection: War
I have seen books made of things neither studied nor ever understood ... the author contenting himself for his own part, to have cast the plot and projected the design of it, and by his industry to have bound up the fagot of unknown provisions; at least the ink and paper his own. This may be said to be a buying or borrowing, and not a making or compiling of a book.Collection: Book
Now, since our condition accommodates things to itself, and transforms them according to itself, we no longer know things in their reality; for nothing comes to us that is not altered and falsified by our Senses. When the compass, the square, and the rule are untrue, all the calculations drawn from them, all the buildings erected by their measure, are of necessity also defective and out of plumb. The uncertainty of our senses renders uncertain everything that they produce.Collection: Philosophy
If I can, I shall keep my death from saying anything that my life has not already said.Collection: Life
It is only reasonable to allow the administration of affairs to mothers before their children reach the age prescribed by law at which they themselves can be responsible. But that father would have reared them ill who could not hope that in their maturity they would have more wisdom and competence than his wife.Collection: Family
Tis faith alone that vividly and certainly comprehends the deep mysteries of our religion.Collection: Christian
This notion [skepticism] is more clearly understood by asking "What do I know?"Collection: Understanding
We seem ambitious God's whole work to undo. ...With new diseases on ourselves we war, And with new physic, a worse engine far.Collection: War