“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.”
Source: Michel de Montaigne: Selected Essays
“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.”
Source: Works: Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy; with Notes, Notices, Etc
“The first distinction among men, and the first consideration that gave one precedence over another, was doubtless the advantage of beauty.”
“We call comeliness a mischance in the first respect, which belongs principally to the face.”
“Books are a languid pleasure.”
“To divert myself from a troublesome fancy, it is but to run to my books; they presently fix me to them, and drive the other out of my thoughts, and do not mutiny to see that I have only recourse to them for want of other more, real, natural, and lively conveniences; they always receive me with the same kindness.”
Source: Works of Michael de Montaigne: Comprising his essays, journey into Italy, and letters
“Business in a certain sort of men is a mark of understanding, and they are honored for it. Their souls seek repose in agitation, as children do by being rocked in a cradle. They may pronounce themselves as serviceable to their friends as troublesome to themselves. No one distributes his money to others, but every one therein distributes his time and his life. There is nothing of which we are so prodigal as of those two things, of which to be thrifty would be both commendable and useful.”
“The curiosity of knowing things has been given to man for a scourge.”
Source: All the Essays of Michael Seigneur de Montaigne
“The premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty; he who has learnt to die has forgot to serve.”
Source: Montaigne's Essays in Three Books: With Notes and Quotations. And an Account of the Author's Life. With a Short Character of the Author and Translator
“There is nothing of evil in life for him who rightly comprehends that death is no evil; to know how to die delivers us from all subjection and constraint.”
Source: Annotated Essays of Michel de Montaigne with English Grammar Exercises: by Michel de Montaigne (Author), Robert Powell (Editor)
“We hold death, poverty, and grief for our principal enemies; but this death, which some repute the most dreadful of all dreadful things, who does not know that others call it the only secure harbor from the storm and tempests of life, the sovereign good of nature, the sole support of liberty, and the common and sudden remedy of all evils?”
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 are neither obstinately nor wilfully to oppose evils, nor truckle under them for want of courage, but that we are naturally to give way to them, according to their condition and our own, we ought to grant free passage to diseases; and I find they stay less with me who let them alone. And I have lost those which are reputed the most tenacious and obstinate of their own defervescence, without any help or art, and contrary to their rules. Let us a little permit nature to take her own way; she better understands her own affairs than we.”
Source: The Works of Michael de Montaigne: Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy
“Lovers are angry, reconciled, entreat, thank, appoint, and finally speak all things, by their.”
“It is the rule of rules, and the general law of all laws, that every person should observe those of the place where he is.”
Source: The Essays of Michael de Montaigne
“Fortune does us neither good nor hurt; she only presents us the matter, and the seed, which our soul, more powerfully than she, turns and applies as she best pleases; being the sole cause and sovereign mistress of her own happy or unhappy condition.”
Source: The Works of Michael de Montaigne: Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy
“Fortune, to show us her power in all things, and to abate our presumption, seeing she could not make fools wise, has made them fortunate.”
Source: All the Essays of Michael Seigneur de Montaigne
“Friendship that possesses the whole soul, and there rules and sways with an absolute sovereignty, can admit of no rival.”
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
“I love a friendship that flatters itself in the sharpness and vigor of its communications.”
“Who is only good that others may know it, and that he may be the better esteemed when 'tis known, who will do well but upon condition that his virtue may be known to men, is one from whom much service is not to be expected.”
Source: Works: Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy; with Notes, Notices, Etc
“A young man ought to cross his own rules, to awake his vigor, and to keep it from growing faint and rusty. And there is no course of life so weak and sottish as that which is carried on by rule and discipline.”
Source: All the Essays of Michael Seigneur de Montaigne
“In my opinion it is the happy living, and not, as Antisthenes said, the happy lying, in which human happiness consists.”
“Knowledge is an excellent drug; but no drug has virtue enough to preserve itself from corruption and decay, if the vessel be tainted and impure wherein it is put to keep.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne (Illustrated)
“After a tongue has once got the knack of lying, it is not to be imagined how impossible almost it is to reclaim it. Whence it comes to pass, that we see some men, who are otherwise very honest, so subject to this vice.”
“Lying is a disgraceful vice, and one that Plutarch paints in most disgraceful colors, when he says that it is "affording testimony that one first despises God, and then fears men." It is not possible more happily to describe its horrible, disgusting, and abandoned nature; for can we imagine anything more vile than to be cowards with regard to men, and brave with regard to God.”
“Can anything be imagined so ridiculous that this miserable and wretched creature, who is not so much as master of himself, but subject to the injuries of all things, should call himself master and emperor of the world, of which he has not power to know the least part, much less to command the whole?”
Source: The Works of Michael de Montaigne: Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy
“A well-bred man is always sociable and complaisant.”
“Experience stands on its own dunghill in medicine, and reason yields it place. Medicine has always professed experience to be the touchstone of its operations.”
“Men are tormented by the opinions they have of things, and not the things themselves.”
“We have more poets than judges and interpreters of poetry. It is easier to write an indifferent poem than to understand a good one. There is, indeed, a certain low and moderate sort of poetry, that a man may well enough judge by certain rules of art; but the true, supreme, and divine poesy is equally above all rules and reason. And whoever discerns the beauty of it with the most assured and most steady sight sees no more than the quick reflection of a flash of lightning.”
Source: Works, Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy: With Notes from All the Commentators, Biographical and Bibliographical Notices &c., &c
“We do not correct the man we hang; we correct others by him.”
Source: Essays of Montaigne
“Repentance is no other than a recanting of the will, and opposition to our fancies, which lead us which way they please.”
Source: Essays [tr. by Cotton
“Vice leaves repentance in the soul, like an ulcer in the flesh, which is always scratching and lacerating itself; for reason effaces all other griefs and sorrows, but it begets that of repentance.”
Source: The Works of Michael de Montaigne: Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy
“It is easier to sacrifice great than little things.”
“It is for little souls, that truckle under the weight of affairs, not to know how clearly to disengage themselves, and not to know how to lay them aside and take them up again.”
Source: The Works of Michael de Montaigne: Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy
“We wake sleeping, and sleep waking. I do not see so clearly in my sleep; but as to my being awake, I never found it clear enough and free from clouds.”
Source: Annotated Essays of Michel de Montaigne with English Grammar Exercises: by Michel de Montaigne (Author), Robert Powell (Editor)
“The most regular and most perfect soul in the world has but too much to do to keep itself upright from being overthrown by its own weakness.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne (Illustrated)
“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.”
“Time steals away without any inconvenience.”
Source: Selected essays
“Petty vexations may at times be petty, but still they are vexations. The smallest and most inconsiderable annoyances are the most piercing. As small letters weary the eye most, so the smallest affairs disturb us most.”
“Truth and reason are common to everyone, and are no more his who spake them first than his who speaks them after.”
Source: The Complete Essays of Montaigne (107 annotated essays in 1 eBook + The Life of Montaigne + The Letters of Montaigne)
“Vexations may be petty, but they are vexations still.”
“The height and value of true virtue consists in the facility, utility, and pleasure of its exercise; so far from difficulty, that boys, as well as men, and the innocent as well as the subtle, may make it their own; and it is by order and good conduct, and not by force, that it is to be acquired.”
Source: Works, Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy: With Notes from All the Commentators, Biographical and Bibliographical Notices &c., &c
“The recognition of virtue is not less valuable from the lips of the man who hates it, since truth forces him to acknowledge it; and though he may be unwilling to take it into his inmost soul, he at least decks himself out in its trappings.”
“The land of marriage has this peculiarity: that strangers are desirous of inhabiting it, while its natural inhabitants would willingly be banished from thence.”
“A man must become wise at his own expense.”
“Human wisdom makes as ill use of her talent when she exercises it in rescinding from the number and sweetness of those pleasures that are naturally our due, as she employs it favorably and well in artificially disguising and tricking out the ills of life to alleviate the sense of them.”
Source: The Essays of Michel de Montaigne
“There are as many and innumerable degrees of wit, as there are cubits between this and heaven.”
“To philosophize is nothing else than to prepare oneself for death.”
“Anyone who does not feel sufficiently strong in memory should not meddle with lying.”
Source: Complete Essays
“The great and glorious masterpiece of men is to live to the point. All other things-to reign, to hoard, to build-are, at most, but inconsiderable props and appendages.”
