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Michel de Montaigne

Michel de Montaigne Quotes

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Famous Michel de Montaigne Quotes

“Memory is a wonderfully useful tool, and without it judgement does its work with difficulty; it is entirely lacking in me.... Now,the more I distrust my memory, the more confused it becomes. It serves me better by chance encounter; I have to solicit it nonchalantly. For if I press it, it is stunned; and once it has begun to totter, the more I probe it, the more it gets mixed up and embarrassed. It serves me at its own time, not at mine.”

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Author:Michel de Montaigne
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“The first law that ever God gave to man was a law of pure obedience; it was a commandment naked and simple, wherein man had nothing to inquire after, or to dispute, forasmuch as to obey is the proper office of a rational soul, acknowledging a heavenly superior and benefactor. From obedience and submission spring all other virtues, as all sin does from self-opinion.”

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Book:Montaigne's Essays: Top Essays
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“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?”

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Book: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,
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“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.”

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Book:The Works of Michael de Montaigne: Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy
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“The study of books is a drowsy and feeble exercise which does not warm you up.”

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Book:The Autobiography of Michel de Montaigne: Comprising the Life of the Wisest Man of His Times : His Childhood, Youth, and Prime : His Adventures in Love and Marriage, at Court, and in Office, War, Revolution, and Plague : His Travels at Home and Abroad : His Habits, Tastes, Whims, and Opinions
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“God might grant us riches, honours, life, and even health, to our own hurt; for every thing that is pleasing to us is not always good for us. If he sends us death, or an increase of sickness, instead of a cure, Vvrga tua et baculus, tuus ipsa me consolata sunt. "Thy rod and thy staff have comforted me," he does it by the rule of his providence, which better and more certainly discerns what is proper for us than we can do; and we ought to take it in good part, as coming from a wise and most friendly hand.”

IfsDoeHandsMightCan DoHurtWiseOughtIncreaseRichesCuresSicknessFriendlyGrantsHonourProvidenceStaff
Book:Works: Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy; with Notes, Notices, Etc
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“I enter into discussion and argument with great freedom and ease, inasmuch as opinion finds me in a bad soil to penetrate and take deep root in. No propositions astonish me, no belief offends me, whatever contrast it offers to my own. There is no fancy so frivolous and so extravagant that it does not seem to me quite suitable to the production of the human mind.”

MindHumansDoeSeemsBeliefMy OwnOpinionOffersArgumentRootsProductionsEaseDiscussionFancySoilHuman MindContrastPropositionsPenetrateFind MeSuitableExtravagantFrivolousGreat FreedomDeep Roots
Author:Michel de Montaigne
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“There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.”

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Book: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
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“Learning is a good medicine: but no medicine is powerful enough to preserve itself from taint and corruption independently of defects in the jar that it is kept in. One man sees clearly but does not see straight: consequently he sees what is good but fails to follow it; he sees knowledge and does not use it.”

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Book:The Essays of Michel de Montaigne
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“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.”

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Author:Michel de Montaigne
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