Michel de Montaigne
I want death to find me planting my cabbages, but careless of death, and still more of my unfinished garden.Collection: Garden
We need to interpret interpretations more than to interpret things.Collection: Needs
The man who thinks he knows does not yet know what knowing isCollection: Men
True freedom is to have power over oneself for everything.Collection: Freedom
All of the days go toward death and the last one arrives there.Collection: Lasts
Sometimes it is a good choice not to choose at all.Collection: Choices
Every man has within himself the entire human conditionCollection: Men
My home...It is my retreat and resting place from wars, I try to keep this corner as a haven against the tempest outside, as I do another corner in my soul.Collection: War
There is no more expensive thing than a free gift.Collection: Free Gifts
Though we may be learned by another's knowledge, we can never be wise but by our own experience.Collection: Wise
As soon as women become ours we are no longer theirs.Collection: Possession
The dispersing and scattering our names into many mouths, we call making them more great.Collection: Names
God defend me from being an honest man according to the description which every day I see made by each man to his own glorificationCollection: Honesty
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.Collection: Art
If I were of the trade, I should naturalize art as much as they "artialize" nature.Collection: Art
Painting myself for others, I have painted my inward self with colors clearer than my original ones. I have no more made my book than my book has made me--a book consubstantial with its author, concerned with my own self, an integral part of my life; not concerned with some third-hand, extraneous purpose, like all other books.Collection: Book
Other passions have objects to flatter them, and seem to content and satisfy them for a while; there is power in ambition, pleasure in luxury, and pelf in covetousness; but envy can gain nothing but vexation.Collection: Passion
While our pulse beats and we feel emotion, let us put off the business. Things will truly seem different to us when we have quieted and cooled down. It is passion that is in command at first, it is passion that speaks, it is not we ourselves.Collection: Passion
Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy; research, the progress; ignorance, the end. There is, by heavens, a strong and generous kind of ignorance that yields nothing, for honour and courage, to knowledge: an ignorance to conceive which needs no less knowledge than to conceive knowledge.Collection: Strong
We must reserve a back shop all our own entirely free, in which to establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and solitude.Collection: Real
A tutor should not be continually thundering instruction into the ears of his pupil, as if he were pouring it through a funnel, but, after having put the lad, like a young horse, on a trot, before him, to observe his paces, and see what he is able to perform, should, according to the extent of his capacity, induce him to taste, to distinguish, and to find out things for himself; sometimes opening the way, at other times leaving it for him to open; and by abating or increasing his own pace, accommodate his precepts to the capacity of his pupil.Collection: Horse
It is the part of cowardice, not of courage, to go and crouch in a hole under a massive tomb, to avoid the blows of fortune.Collection: Blow
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.Collection: Women
Nothing else but an insatiate thirst of enjoying a greedily desired object.Collection: Love
The only good histories are those that have been written by the persons themselves who commanded in the affairs whereof they write.Collection: Writing
And not to serve for a table-talk.Collection: Tables
Children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.Collection: Sports
He that had never seen a river imagined the first he met to be the sea; and the greatest things that have fallen within our knowledge we conclude the extremes that nature makes of the kind.Collection: Sea
I admire the assurance and confidence everyone has in himself, whereas there is hardly anything I am sure I know or that I dare give my word I can do.Collection: Confidence
I may indeed very well happen to contradict myself; but truth, as Demades said, I do not contradict.Collection: May
All passions that suffer themselves to be relished and digested are but moderate.Collection: Passion
There is power in ambition, pleasure in luxury...but envy can gain nothing but vexation.Collection: Gratitude
How many we know who have fled the sweetness of a tranquil life in their homes, among the friends, to seek the horror of uninhabitable deserts; who have flung themselves into humiliation, degradation, and the contempt of the world, and have enjoyed these and even sought them out.Collection: Home
We cannot fail in following nature.Collection: Nature
The laws of conscience, though we ascribe them to nature, actually come from custom.Collection: Law
A woman is no sooner ours than we are no longer hers.Collection: Women
Custom is a violent and treacherous school mistress. She, by little and lithe, slyly and unperceived, slips in the foot of her authority; but having by this gentle and humble beginning, with the benefit of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious and tyrannic countenance, against which we have no more the courage or the power so much as to lift up our eyes.Collection: Humble
There is a certain amount of purpose, acquiescence, and satisfaction in nursing one's melancholy.Collection: Sadness
I would have every man write what he knows and no more.Collection: Writing
I will follow the right side even to the fire, but excluding the fire if I can.Collection: Integrity
What enriches language is its being handled and exploited by beautiful minds-not so much by making innovations as by expanding it through more vigorous and varied applications, by extending it and deploying it. It is not words that they contribute: what they do is enrich their words, deepen their meanings and tie down their usage; they teach it unaccustomed rhythms, prudently though and with ingenuity.Collection: Beautiful
Of the opinions of philosophy I most gladly embrace those that are most solid, that is to say, most human and most our own; my opinions, in conformity with my conduct, are low and humble.Collection: Philosophy
Whatever the Benefits of Fortune are , they yet require a Palate fit to relish and taste them; 'Tis Fruition, and not Possession, that renders us Happy.Collection: Appreciation
He whose mouth is out of taste says the wine is flat.Collection: Wine
Every one is well or ill at ease, according as he finds himself! not he whom the world believes, but he who believes himself to be so, is content; and in him alone belief gives itself being and realityCollection: Believe
Now, since everything else is furnished with the exact amount of needle and thread required to maintain its being, it is in truth incredible that we alone should be brought into the world in a defective and indigent state, in a state such that we cannot maintain ourselves without external aid.Collection: World
He who fears he will suffer, already suffers from his fear.Collection: Wisdom
After mature deliberation of counsel, the good Queen to establish a rule and immutable example unto all posterity, for the moderation and required modesty in a lawful marriage, ordained the number of six times a day as a lawful, necessary and competent limit.Collection: Sex
I never rebel so much against France as not to regard Paris with a friendly eye; she has had my heart since my childhood... I love her tenderly, even to her warts and her spots. I am French only by this great city: the glory of France, and one of the noblest ornaments of the world.Collection: Heart