Michel de Montaigne
There is a sort of gratification in doing good which makes us rejoice in ourselves.
Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head.
One may be humble out of pride.
When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her.
If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because it was I.
Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.
In plain Truth, it is no Want, but rather Abundance that creates Avarice.Collection: Avarice Greed
He who is not sure of his memory, should not undertake the trade of lying.Collection: Honesty
No doctor takes pleasure in the health even of his friends.Collection: Doctors
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.Collection: Respect
The pleasantest things in the world are pleasant thoughts, and the great art of life is to have as many of them as possible.Collection: Happiness
The truth of these days is not that which really is, but what every man persuades another man to believe.Collection: Truth
Take care that old age does not wrinkle your spirit even more than your face.Collection: Wrinkles
The only thing certain is nothing is certain.Collection: Positive
Only the fools are certain and assured.Collection: Wisdom
Don't be afraid to say what you are not afraid to thinkCollection: Thinking
Man is quite insane. He wouldn?t know how to create a maggot, and he creates Gods by the dozen.Collection: God
A man must learn to endure patiently what he cannot avoid conveniently.Collection: Inspirational
We must learn to endure what we cannot avoid. Our life is composed, like the harmony of the world, of contrary things, also of different tones, sweet and harsh, sharp and flat, soft and loud. If a musician liked only one kind, what would he have to say?Collection: Life
We can be knowledgeable with other men's knowledge, but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.Collection: Wise
In my opinion, every rich man is a miser.Collection: Men
A man must keep a little back shop where he can be himself without reserve. In solitude alone can he know true freedom.Collection: Freedom
Miracles arise from our ignorance of nature, not from nature itself.Collection: Ignorance
It is a thorny undertaking, and more so than it seems, to follow a movement so wandering as that of our mind, to penetrate the opaque depths of its innermost folds, to pick out and immobilize the innumerable flutterings that agitate it.Collection: Mind
Beauty is the true prerogative of women, and so peculiarly their own, that our sex, though naturally requiring another sort of feature, is never in its lustre but when puerile and beardless, confused and mixed with theirs.Collection: Beauty
Every period of life has its peculiar prejudices; whoever saw old age, that did not applaud the past, and condemn the present times?Collection: Past
Such as are in immediate fear of a losing their estates, of banishment, or of slavery, live in perpetual anguish, and lose all appetite and repose; whereas such as are actually poor, slaves, or exiles, ofttimes live as merrily as other folk.Collection: Slavery
The strength of any plan depends on the time. Circumstances and things eternally shift and change.Collection: Circumstances
The only good histories are those written by those who had command in the events they describe.Collection: History
It takes so much to be a king that he exists only as such. That extraneous glare that surrounds him hides him and conceals him from us; our sight breaks and is dissipated by it being filled and arrested by this strong light.Collection: Strong
A good marriage ... is a sweet association in life: full of constancy, trust, and an infinite number of useful and solid services and mutual obligations.Collection: Trust
Arts and sciences are not cast in a mould, but are found and perfected by degrees, by often handling and polishing.Collection: Art
To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind to 't.Collection: Positive
I have seen people rude by being over-polite.Collection: People
Persons of mean understandings, not so inquisitive, nor so well instructed, are made good Christians, and by reverence and obedience, implicity believe, and abide by their belief.Collection: Christian
Some, either from being glued to vice by a natural attachment, or from long habit, no longer recognize its ugliness.Collection: Attachment
We easily enough confess in others an advantage of courage, strength, experience, activity, and beauty; but an advantage in judgment we yield to none.Collection: Yield
A speech belongs half to the speaker and half to the listener.Collection: Half
It is putting a very high price on one's conjectures to have someone roasted alive on their account.Collection: Alive
Perhaps it is not without reason that we attribute facility in belief and conviction to simplicity and ignorance; for it seems to me I once learned that belief was sort of an impression made on our mind, and that the softer it is the less resistant t.Collection: Ignorance
One may disavow and disclaim vices that surprise us and whereto our passions transport us. But those which by long habit are rooted in a strong and anchored in a powerful will are not subject to contradiction. Repentance is but a denying of our will, and an opposition of our fantasies, which diverts us here and there.Collection: Forgiveness
Nature clasps all her creatures in a universal embrace; there is not one of them which she has not plainly furnished with all means necessary to the conservation of its being.Collection: Nature
And I loathe people who find it harder to put up with a gown askew than with a soul askew and who judge a man by his bow, his bearing and his boots.Collection: Educational
Virtue can have naught to do with ease. . . . It craves a steep and thorny path.Collection: Ease
I had rather fashion my mind than furnish it.Collection: Fashion
It is a small soul, buried beneath the weight of affairs, that does not know how to get clean away from them, that cannot put them aside and pick them up again.Collection: Soul
The laws keep up their credit, not by being just, but because they are laws; 'tis the mystic foundation of their authority; they have no other, and it well answers their purpose. They are often made by fools; still oftener by men who, out of hatred to equality, fail in equity; but always by men, vain and irresolute authors.Collection: Men
As far as I am concerned, no road that would lead us to health is either arduous or expensive.Collection: Concerned
To know how to live is my trade and my art.Collection: Art