Michel de Montaigne
We are all of us richer than we think we are.Collection: Thinking
Poetry reproduces an indefinable mood that is more amorous than love itself. Venus is not so beautiful all naked, alive, and panting, as she is here in Virgil.Collection: Love
Even opinion is of force enough to make itself to be espoused at the expense of life.Collection: Opinion
All we do is to look after the opinions and learning of others: we ought to make them our own.Collection: Looks
Children's games are hardly games. Children are never more serious than when they play.Collection: Inspirational
Is it not enough to make me come back to life out of spite, to have someone who spat in my face while I existed come and rub my feet when I am beginning to exist no longer?Collection: Feet
It is a disaster that wisdom forbids you to be satisfied with yourself and always sends you away dissatisfied and fearful, whereas stubbornness and foolhardiness fill their hosts with joy and assurance.Collection: Joy
We have no participation in Being, because all human nature is ever midway between being born and dying, giving off only a vague image and shadow of itself, and a weak and uncertain opinion. And if you chance to fix your thoughts on trying to grasp its essence, it would be neither more nor less than if your tried to clutch water.Collection: Thinking
My trade and my art is living. He who forbids me to speak about it according to my sense, experience, and practice, let him orderthe architect to speak of buildings not according to himself but according to his neighbor; according to another man's knowledge, not according to his own.Collection: Life
The wise man should withdraw his soul within, out of the crowd, and keep it in freedom and power to judge things freely; but as for externals, he should wholly follow the accepted fashions and forms.Collection: Wise
I am disgusted with innovation, in whatever guise, and with reason, for I have seen very harmful effects of it.Collection: Innovation
I want to be seen here in my simple, natural, ordinary fashion, without straining or artifice; for it is myself that I portray... I am myself the matter of my book.Collection: Fashion
That is why Bias jested with those who were going through the perils of a great storm with him and calling on the gods for help: "Shut up," he said, "so that they do not realize that you are here with me.Collection: Storm
Old age is a lease nature only signs as a particular favor, and it may be, to one, only in the space of two or three ages; and then with a pass to boot, to carry him through, all the traverses and difficulties she has strewed in the way of his long career.Collection: Careers
As great enmities spring from great friendships, and mortal distempers from vigorous health, so do the most surprising and the wildest frenzies from the high and lively agitations of our souls.Collection: Spring
If not for that of conscience, yet at least for ambition's sake, let us reject ambition, let us disdain that thirst of honor and renown, so low and mendicant; that it makes us beg it of all sorts of people.Collection: Ambition
Whom conscience, ne'er asleep, Wounds with incessant strokes, not loud, but deep.Collection: Incessant
The whole idea we have for their chastity is ridiculous. They would have to become numb and invisible to please us. I don't know whether the exploits of Alexander and Caesar really surpass the resolution of a beautiful young woman, bred up in the light and commerce of our society, who still keeps herself whole. There is no doing so hard as not doing.Collection: Beautiful
The smallest annoyances, disturb us the most.Collection: Happiness
The shortest way to arrive at glory should be to do that for conscience which we do for glory. And the virtue of Alexander appears to me with much less vigor in his theater than that of Socrates in his mean and obscure. I can easily conceive Socrates in the place of Alexander, but Alexander in that of Socrates I cannot.Collection: Mean
Those who give the first shock to a state are the first overwhelmed in its ruin; the fruits of public commotion are seldom enjoyed by him who was the first mover; he only beats the water for another's net.Collection: Giving
It is fear that I stand most in fear of, in sharpness it exceeds every other feeling.Collection: Feelings
The land of marriage has this peculiarity: that strangers are desirous of inhabiting it, while its natural inhabitants would willingly be banished from thence.Collection: Land
No two men ever judged alike of the same thing, and it is impossible to find two opinions exactly similar, not only in different men but in the same men at different times.Collection: Change
Diogenes was asked what wine he liked best; and he answered as I would have done when he said, "Somebody else's".Collection: Wine
I give my opinion not as being good, but as being my own.Collection: Giving
After they had accustomed themselves at Rome to the spectacles of the slaughter of animals, they proceeded to those of the slaughter of men, to the gladiators.Collection: Life
We must not attach knowledge to the mind, we have to incorporate it there.Collection: Understanding
The diversity of physical arguments and opinions embraces all sorts of methods.Collection: Diversity
He that had never seen a river, imagined the first he met with to be the sea.Collection: Ignorance
If love and ambition should be in equal balance, and come to jostle with equal force, I make no doubt but that the last would win the prize.Collection: Ambition
Our religion is made to eradicate vices, instead it encourages them, covers them, and nurtures them.Collection: Political
Travelling through the world produces a marvellous 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.Collection: Men
The world always looks straights ahead; as for me, I turn my gaze inward, I fix it there and keep it busy. Everyone looks in front of him: as for me, I look inside me: I have no business but with myself; I continually observe myself, I take stock of myself, I taste myself. Others...they always go forward; as for me, I roll about in myself.Collection: Inward
No man is so exquisitely honest or upright in living, but that ten times in his life he might not lawfully be hanged.Collection: Truth
We every day and every hour say things of another that we might more properly say of ourselves, could we but apply our observations to our own concerns.Collection: Criticism
Meditation is a rich and powerful method of study for anyone who knows how to examine his mind.Collection: Powerful
Writing does not cause misery. It is born of misery.Collection: Writing
All opinions in the world agree in this, that pleasure is our end, although they differ as to the means of attaining it.Collection: Mean
It is far more probable that our senses should deceive us, than that an old woman should be carried up a chimney on a broom stick; and that it is far less astonishing that witnesses should lie, than that witches should perform the acts that were alleged.Collection: Lying
There never were, in the world, two opinions alike, no more than two hairs, or two grains; the most universal quality is diversity.Collection: Two
Judgement holds in me a magisterial seat, at least it carefully tries to. It lets my feelings go their way, both hatred and friendship, even the friendship I bear myself, without being changed and corrupted by them.Collection: Friendship
To honor him whom we have made is far from honoring him that hath made us.Collection: God
I enjoy books as misers enjoy treasures, because I know I can enjoy them whenever I please.Collection: Book
..a man may live long, yet live very little. Satisfaction in life depends not on the number of your years, but on your will.Collection: Men
Health is a precious thing, and the only one, in truth, meriting that a man should lay out not only his time, sweat, labor and goods, but also life itself to obtain it.Collection: Health
There is no doubt that Greek and Latin are great and handsome ornaments, but we buy them too dear.Collection: Latin
The wise man lives as long as he ought, not so long as he can.Collection: Wise
If others examined themselves attentively, as I do, they would find themselves, as I do, full of inanity and nonsense. Get rid of it I cannot without getting rid of myself.Collection: Nonsense