“Tis the taste of effeminacy that disrelishes ordinary and accustomed things.”
Source: The Essays of Montaigne
“The general order of things that takes care of fleas and moles also takes care of men, if they will have the same patience that fleas and moles have, to leave it to itself.”
Source: Essays:
“Tis well for old age that it is always accompanied with want of perception, ignorance, and a facility of being deceived. For should we see how we are used and would not acquiesce, what would become of us?”
Source: The Works of Michael de Montaigne: Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy
“Pride dwells in the thought; the tongue can have but a very little share in it.”
Source: Montaigne's Essays: Top Essays
“A father is very miserable who has no other hold on his children's affection than the need they have of his assistance, if that can be called affection.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne (Illustrated)
“Opinion is a powerful party, bold, and without measure.”
Source: The Essays of Michael Seigneur de Montaigne: Translated Into English ...
“All passions that suffer themselves to be relished and digested are but moderate.”
Source: The Works of Michael de Montaigne: Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy. With Notes from All the Commentators, Biographical and Bibliographical Notices &c., &c
“No man divulges his revenue, or at least which way it comes in: but every one publishes his acquisitions.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne (Illustrated)
“Ceremony forbids us to express by words things that are lawful and natural, and we obey it; reason forbids us to do things unlawful and ill, and nobody obeys it.”
Source: Montaigne's Essays: Top Essays
“To smell, though well, is to stink.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne (Illustrated)
“Praise is always pleasing, let it come from whom, or upon what account it will.”
Source: Annotated Essays of Michel de Montaigne with English Grammar Exercises: by Michel de Montaigne (Author), Robert Powell (Editor)
“Decency, not to dare to do that in public which it is decent enough to do in private.”
Source: Montaigne's Essays: Top Essays
“Order a purge for your brain, it will there be much better employed than upon your stomach.”
Source: Annotated Essays of Michel de Montaigne with English Grammar Exercises: by Michel de Montaigne (Author), Robert Powell (Editor)
“I have never observed other effects of whipping than to render boys more cowardly, or more willfully obstinate.”
Source: Essays of Montaigne
“We are all of us richer than we think we are; but we are taught to borrow and to beg, and brought up more to make use of what is another's than of our own.”
Source: All the Essays of Michael Seigneur de Montaigne
“Most men are rich in borrowed sufficiency: a man may very well say a good thing, give a good answer, cite a good sentence, without at all seeing the force of either the one or the other.”
Source: Annotated Essays of Michel de Montaigne with English Grammar Exercises: by Michel de Montaigne (Author), Robert Powell (Editor)
“He that I am reading seems always to have the most force.”
Source: The Essays of Michael Seigneur de Montaigne: Translated Into English
“Rash and incessant scolding runs into custom and renders itself despised.”
Source: Michel de Montaigne: Selected Essays
“Some men seem remarkable to the world in whom neither their wives nor their valets saw anything extraordinary. Few men have been admired by their servants.”
“We owe subjection and obedience to all our kings, whether good or bad, alike, for that has respect unto their office; but as to esteem and affection, these are only due to their virtue.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne (Illustrated)
“He whose mouth is out of taste says the wine is flat.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne (Illustrated)
“A learned man is not learned in all things; but a sufficient man is sufficient throughout, even to ignorance itself.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne (Illustrated)
“I see several animals that live so entire and perfect a life, some without sight, others without hearing: who knows whether to us also one, two, or three, or many other senses, may not be wanting?”
Source: The Complete Works of Michael de Montaigne; Comprising; the Essays, Translated by Cotton; the Letters; the Journey Into Germany and Italy, Now First Translated; a Life by the Editor; Notes: ... Critical Opinions; ... the Éloges of MM. Jay and Villemain; a
“Difficulty is a coin the learned make use of like jugglers, to conceal the inanity of their art.”
Source: The Essays of Michel de Montaigne
“A man must always study, but he must not always go to school: what a contemptible thing is an old abecedarian!”
Source: The Works of Michael de Montaigne: Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy
“God defend me from myself.”
“We must learn to suffer what we cannot evade.”
Source: Essays of Montaigne
“Why dost thou complain of this world? It detains thee not; thy own cowardice is the cause, if thou livest in pain.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne (Illustrated)
“Glory consists of two parts: the one in setting too great a value upon ourselves, and the other in setting too little a value upon others.”
Source: Montaigne's Essays: Top Essays
“Necessity reconciles and brings men together; and this accidental connection afterward forms itself into laws.”
Source: Essays:
“We are nearer neighbors to ourselves than the whiteness of snow or the weight of stones are to us: if man does not know himself, how should he know his functions and powers?”
Source: Essays of Montaigne, tr. by C. Cotton; rev. by W. C. Hazlett [!
“If health and a fair day smile upon me, I am a very good fellow; if a corn trouble my toe, I am sullen, out of humor, and inaccessible.”
Source: The Essays of Michel de Montaigne
“The truth of these days is not that which really is, but what every man persuades another man to believe.”
Source: Montaigne's Essays: Top Essays
“What kind of truth is it which has these mountains as its boundary and is a lie beyond them?”
“It is no hard matter to get children; but after they are born, then begins the trouble, solicitude, and care rightly to train, principle, and bring them up.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne (Illustrated)
“Virtue cannot be followed but for herself, and if one sometimes borrows her mask to some other purpose, she presently pulls it away again.”
Source: Montaigne's Essays: Top Essays
“If virtue cannot shine bright, but by the conflict of contrary appetites, shall we then say that she cannot subsist without the assistance of vice, and that it is from her that she derives her reputation and honor?”
Source: Michel de Montaigne: Selected Essays
“It costs an unreasonable woman no more to pass over one reason than another; they cherish themselves most where they are most wrong.”
Source: Montaigne's Essays: Top Essays
“We should rather examine, who is better learned, than who is more learned.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne (Illustrated)
“I find no quality so easy for a man to counterfeit as devotion, though his life and manner are not conformable to it; the essence of it is abstruse and occult, but the appearances easy and showy.”
Source: Works: Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy; with Notes, Notices, Etc
“A little of everything and nothing thoroughly, after the French fashion.”
Source: Essays
“Just as in habiliments it is a sign of weakness to wish to make oneself noticeable by some peculiar and unaccustomed fashion, so, in language, the quest for new-fangled phrases and little-known words comes from a puerile and pedantic ambition.”
Source: The Essays of Montaigne
“Laws are often made by fools, and even more often by men who fail in equity because they hate equality: but always by men, vain authorities who can resolve nothing.”
“Laws gain their authority from actual possession and custom: it is perilous to go back to their origins; laws, like our rivers, get greater and nobler as they roll along: follow them back upstream to their sources and all you find is a tiny spring, hardly recognizable; as time goes by it swells with pride and grows in strength.”
Source: The Essays of Michel de Montaigne
“Men do not know the natural infirmity of their mind: it does nothing but ferret and quest, and keeps incessantly whirling around, building up and becoming entangled in its own work, like silkworms, and is suffocated in it. A mouse in a pitch barrel...thinks it notices from a distance some sort of glimmer of imaginary light and truth; but while running toward it, it is crossed by so many difficulties and obstacles, and diverted by so many new quests, that it strays from the road, bewildered.”
“I don't break the law* made for crooks, when I take away my own property - thus I am not obliged to conform to the law made for murderers when I deprive myself of my own life.”
“I am further of opinion that it would be better for us to have [no laws] at all than to have them in so prodigious numbers as we have.”
Source: Essays [tr. by Cotton
“He was doubtless an understanding Fellow that said, there was no happy Marriage but betwixt a blind Wife and a deaf Husband.”
Source: Essays of Michael Seigneur de Montaigne: In Three Books with Marginal Notes and Quotations. And an Account of the Author's Life. With a Short Character of the Author and Translator,
“We find our energies are actually cramped when we are overanxious to succeed.”
“Nature has with a Motherly Tenderness observed this, that the Action she has enjoyned us for our Necessity should be also pleasant to us, and invites us to them, not only by Reason, but also by Appetite: and tis Injustice to infringe her Laws.”
Source: Essays of Michel de Montaigne
