Michel de Montaigne
All the world knows me in my book, and my book in me.Collection: Book
There are few men who dare to publish to the world the prayers they make to Almighty God.Collection: God
We have power over nothing except our will.Collection: Self Respect
This very Rome that we behold deserves our love ...: the only common and universal city.Collection: Rome
The general order of things that takes care of fleas and moles also takes care of men, if they will have the same patience that fleas and moles have, to leave it to itself.Collection: Men
The great and glorious masterpiece of men is to live to the point. All other things-to reign, to hoard, to build-are, at most, but inconsiderable props and appendages.Collection: Men
Nature has, herself, I fear, imprinted in man a kind of instinct to inhumanity.Collection: Men
No man profiteth but by the loss of others.Collection: Loss
Let us a little permit nature to take her own way; she better understands her own affairs than we.Collection: Nature
To distract myself from tiresome thoughts, I have only to resort to books; they easily draw my mind to themselves and away from other things.Collection: Book
The daughter-in-law of Pythagoras said that a woman who goes to bed with a man ought to lay aside her modesty with her skirt, and put it on again with her petticoatCollection: Daughter
Petty vexations may at times be petty, but still they are vexations. The smallest and most inconsiderable annoyances are the most piercing. As small letters weary the eye most, so the smallest affairs disturb us most.Collection: Eye
Wisdom is a solid and entire building, of which every piece keeps its place and bears its mark.Collection: Wisdom
The bitterness of the potion, and the abhorrence of the patient are necessary circumstances to the operation. It must be something to trouble and disturb the stomach that must purge and cure it.Collection: Science
Custom is a second nature, and no less powerful.Collection: Powerful
I must accommodate my history to the hour: I may presently change, not only by fortune, but also by intention.Collection: History
Oh senseless man, who cannot possibly make a worm or a flea and yet will create Gods by the dozen!Collection: God
My appetite comes to me while eating.Collection: Eating
For all parts of the body that we see fit to expose to the wind and air are found fit to endure it: face, feet, hands, legs, shoulders, head, according as custom invites us. For if there is a part of us that is tender and that seems as though it should fear the cold, it should be the stomach, where digestion takes place; our fathers left it uncovered, and our ladies, soft and delicate as they are, sometimes go half bare down to the navel.Collection: Father
We should spread joy, but, as far as we can, repress sorrow.Collection: Wisdom
Words repeated again have as another sound, so another sense.Collection: Sound
Whatever can be done another day can be done today.Collection: Done
Have you been able to think out and manage your own life? You have done the greatest task of all.... All other things, ruling, hoarding, building, are only little appendages and props, at most.Collection: Life
There is no greater enemy to those who would please than expectation.Collection: Expectations
We hold death, poverty, and grief for our principal enemies; but this death, which some repute the most dreadful of all dreadful things, who does not know that others call it the only secure harbor from the storm and tempests of life, the sovereign good of nature, the sole support of liberty, and the common and sudden remedy of all evils?Collection: Death
We seek and offer ourselves to be gulled.Collection: Offers
Some impose upon the world that they believe that which they do not; others, more in number, make themselves believe that they believe, not being able to penetrate into what it is to believe.Collection: Believe
There is not one of us that would not be worse than kings, if so continually corrupted as they are with a sort of vermin called flatterers.Collection: Kings
As for extraordinary things, all the provision in the world would not suffice.Collection: World
As far as physicians go, chance is more valuable than knowledge.Collection: Physicians
If my mind could gain a firm footing, I would not make essays, I would make decisions; but it is always in apprenticeship and on trial.Collection: Decision
There is more ado to interpret interpretations than to interpret things, and more books upon books than upon any other subject; we do nothing but comment upon one another. Every place swarms with commentaries; of authors there is great scarcity.Collection: Book
The greater part of the world's troubles are due to questions of grammar.Collection: World
Pride and curiosity are the two scourges of our souls. The latter prompts us to poke our noses into everything, and the former forbids us to leave anything unresolved and undecided.Collection: Pride
I moreover affirm that our wisdom itself, and wisest consultations, for the most part commit themselves to the conduct of chance.Collection: Chance
The reverse side of truth has a hundred thousand shapes and no defined limits.Collection: Shapes
We feel a kind of bittersweet pricking of malicious delight in contemplating the misfortunes of others.Collection: Delight
We are nothing but ceremony; ceremony carries us away, and we leave the substance of things; we hang on to the branches and abandon the trunk and body.Collection: Society
A good marriage (if any there be) refuses the conditions of love and endeavors to present those of amity.Collection: Good Marriage
We are nearer neighbours to ourselves than whiteness to snow, or weight to stones.Collection: Snow
When Socrates, after being relieved of his irons, felt the relish of the itching that their weight had caused in his legs, he rejoiced to consider the close alliance between pain and pleasure.Collection: Pain
If by being overstudious, we impair our health and spoil our good humor, let us give it up.Collection: Giving
Men are most apt to believe what they least understand.Collection: Believe
Don't discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose; if you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved.Collection: Praise
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.Collection: Inspirational
The conduct of our lives is the true mirror of our doctrine.Collection: Mirrors
Whoever will be cured of ignorance, let him confess it.Collection: Ignorance
We trouble our life by thoughts about death, and our death by thoughts about life.Collection: Death