Michel de Montaigne
To call out for the hand of the enemy is a rather extreme measure, yet a better one, I think, than to remain in continual fever over an accident that has no remedy. But since all the precautions that a man can take are full of uneasiness and uncertainty, it is better to prepare with fine assurance for the worst that can happen, and derive some consolation from the fact that we are not sure that it will happen.Collection: Men
Pythagoras used to say that life resembles the Olympic Games: a few people strain their muscles to carry off a prize; others bring trinkets to sell to the crowd for gain; and some there are, and not the worst, who seek no other profit than to look at the show and see how and why everything is done; spectators of the life of other people in order to judge and regulate their own.Collection: Life
Everyone gives the title of barbarism to everything that is not in use in his own country.Collection: Country
To die is not to play a part in society; it is the act of a single person. Let us live and laugh among our friends; let us die and sulk among strangers.Collection: Play
Certainly, if he still has himself, a man of understanding has lost nothing.Collection: Men
Tis the taste of effeminacy that disrelishes ordinary and accustomed things.Collection: Ordinary
Shame on all eloquence which leaves us with a taste for itself and not for its substance.Collection: Substance
Glory and repose are things that cannot possibly inhabit in one and the same place.Collection: Glory
The corruption of the age is made up by the particular contribution of every individual man; some contribute treachery, others injustice, atheism, tyranny, avarice, cruelty, according to their power.Collection: Power
How often our involuntary facial motions testify to the thoughts we were keeping secret, and betray us to those around!Collection: Thoughtful
I turn my gaze inward. I fix it there and keep it busy. I look inside myself. I continually observe myself.Collection: Inward
I find that the best virtue I have has in it some tincture of vice.Collection: Vices
Examples teach us that in military affairs, and all others of a like nature, study is apt to enervate and relax the courage of man, rather than to give strength and energy to the mind.Collection: Military
An able reader often discovers in other people's writings perfections beyond those that the author put in or perceived, and lends them richer meanings and aspects.Collection: Writing
I have ever loved to repose myself, whether sitting or lying, with my heels as high or higher than my head.Collection: Lying
There is nothing useless in nature; not even uselessness itselfCollection: Useless
Off I go, rummaging about in books for sayings which please me.Collection: Book
Courtesy, like grace and beauty, that which begets liking and inclination to love one another at the first sight, and in the very beginning of our acquaintance and familiarity; and, consequently, that which first opens the door for us to better ourselves by the example of others, if there be anything in the society worth noticeCollection: Sight
I look upon the too good opinion that man has of himself, as the nursing mother of all false opinions, both public and private.Collection: Mother
Ambition is, of all other, the most contrary humor to solitude; and glory and repose are so inconsistent that they cannot possibly inhabit one and the same place; and for so much as I understand, those have only their arms and legs disengaged from the crowd, their mind and intention remain engaged behind more than ever.Collection: Ambition
There is no knowledge so hard to acquire as the knowledge of how to live this life well and naturally.Collection: This Life
Oh these foolish men! They could not create so much as a worm, but they create gods by the dozens.Collection: Men
We took advantage of [the Indians'] ignorance and inexperience to incline them the more easily toward treachery, lewdness, avarice, and every sort of inhumanity and cruelty, after the example and pattern of our ways.Collection: Ignorance
Man in sooth is a marvellous, vain, fickle, and unstable subject.Collection: Men
I am much afraid that we shall have very greatly hastened the decline and ruin of the New World by our contagion, and that we willhave sold it our opinions and our arts very dear.Collection: Art
The body enjoys a great share in our being, and has an eminent place in it. Its structure and composition, therefore, are worthy of proper consideration.Collection: Body
Oh, what a valiant faculty is hope, that in a mortal subject, and in a moment, makes nothing of usurping infinity, immensity, eternity, and of supplying its masters indigence, at its pleasure, with all things he can imagine or desire!Collection: Hope
Socrates and then Archesilaus used to make their pupils speak first; they spoke afterwards. 'Obest plerumque iss discere volunt authoritas eorum qui docent.' [For those who want to learn, the obstacle can often be the authority of those who teach]Collection: Educational
Not only does the wind of accidents stir me according to its blowing, but I am also stirred and troubled by the instability of my attitude.Collection: Attitude
And as hearbes and trees are bettered and fortified by being transplanted, so formes of speach are embellished and graced by variation.... As in our ordinary language, we shall sometimes meete with excellent phrases, and quaint metaphors, whose blithnesse fadeth through age, and colour is tarnish by to common using them.Collection: Tree
One must be a little foolish if one does not want to be even more stupid.Collection: Stupid
Lucius Arruntius killed himself, he said, to escape both the future and the past.Collection: Past
Speech belongs half to the speaker, half to the listener. The latter must prepare to receive it according to the motion it takes.Collection: Communication
The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from Custom.Collection: Law
My business is only to keep myself in motion, whilst motion pleases me; I only walk for the walk's sake.Collection: Please Me
We are born to inquire after truth; it belongs to a greater power to possess it. It is not, as Democritus said, hid in the bottom of the deeps, but rather elevated to an infinite height in the divine knowledge.Collection: Height
Men are nothing until they are excited.Collection: Men
Age imprints more wrinkles a in the mind, than it does in the face, and souls are never, or very rarely seen, that in growing old do not smell sour and musty. Man moves all together, both towards his perfection and decay.Collection: Moving
There are truths on this side of the Pyrenees which are falsehoods on the otherCollection: Responsibility
Intoxication is calculated to put heart into the elderly and give them delight in dancing.Collection: Heart
It makes me hate accepting things that are probable when they are held up before me as infallibly true. I prefer these words which tone down and modify the hastiness of our propositions: "Perhaps, In some sort, Some, They say, I think," and the like.Collection: Hate
There is a plague on Man, the opinion that he knows something.Collection: Men
For there is no air that men so greedily draw in, that diffuses itself so soon, and that penetrates so deep as that of license.Collection: Men
From Obedience and submission comes all our virtues, and all sin is comes from self-opinion.Collection: Self
The common notions that we find in credit around us and infused into our souls by our fathers' seed, these seem to be the universal and natural ones. Whence it comes to pass that what is off the hinges of custom, people believe to be off the hinges of reason.Collection: Father
Whoever will imagine a perpetual confession of ignorance, a judgment without leaning or inclination, on any occasion whatever, hasa conception of Pyrrhonism.Collection: Ignorance
If my intentions were not to be read in my eyes and voice, I should not have survived so long without quarrels and without harm, seeing the indiscreet freedom with which I say, right or wrong, whatever comes into my head.Collection: Eye
But as Nature is the best guide, teaching must be the development of natural inclinations, for which purpose the teacher must watch his pupil and listen to him, not continually bawl words into his ears as if pouring water into a funnel. Good teaching will come from a mind well made rather than well filled.Collection: Teacher
"Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation." -If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than it was because he was he and I was I.Collection: Love