Michel de Montaigne
The entire lower world was created in the likeness of the higher world. All that exists in the higher world appears like an image in this lower world; yet all this is but One.
It is a monstrous thing that I will say, but I will say it all the same: I find in many things more restraint and order in my morals than in my opinions, and my lust less depraved than my reason.
It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness. A spirited mind never stops within itself; it is always aspiring and going beyond its strength.
If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not even think of themselves.
I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie.
The worst of my actions or conditions seem not so ugly unto me as I find it both ugly and base not to dare to avouch for them.
It is an absolute and virtually divine perfection to know how to enjoy our being rightfully.
The finest souls are those that have the most variety and suppleness.
Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.
An untempted woman cannot boast of her chastity.
There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.
I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better.
I have often seen people uncivil by too much civility, and tiresome in their courtesy.
We are Christians by the same title as we are natives of Perigord or Germany.
If a man urge me to tell wherefore I loved him, I feel it cannot be expressed but by answering: Because it was he, because it was myself.
Let us not be ashamed to speak what we shame not to think.
There is perhaps no more obvious vanity than to write of it so vainly.
The world is all a carcass and vanity, The shadow of a shadow, a play And in one word, just nothing.
The beautiful souls are they that are universal, open, and ready for all things.
Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.
The world is but a perpetual see-saw.
Any person of honor chooses rather to lose his honor than to lose his conscience.
I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.
Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.
A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.
Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.
The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them... Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.
I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.
I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics.
He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.
In nine lifetimes, you'll never know as much about your cat as your cat knows about you.
Ambition is not a vice of little people.
The soul which has no fixed purpose in life is lost; to be everywhere, is to be nowhere.
There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.
Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.
A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself.
I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself, and not by borrowing.
Rejoice in the things that are present; all else is beyond thee.
I set forth a humble and inglorious life; that does not matter. You can tie up all moral philosophy with a common and private life just as well as with a life of richer stuff. Each man bears the entire form of man's estate.
He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.
Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows.
We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.
Wit is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not how to use it discreetly.
It should be noted that children at play are not playing about; their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity.
Confidence in others' honesty is no light testimony of one's own integrity.
I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.
Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of soul, impossible.
I quote others only in order the better to express myself.
Unless a man feels he has a good enough memory, he should never venture to lie.