Michel de Montaigne famous quotes

Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Memorial Day #Courage #Veterans Day

There is nothing so extreme that is not allowed by the custom of some nation or other.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Extremes

It is in vain that we get upon stilts, for once on them, it is still with our legs that we must walk. And on the highest throne in the world we are still sitting on our own ass.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Vanity #Thrones #Sitting

Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Confidence #Self Esteem #Love Yourself

Every man carries the entire form of human condition.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Men #Form #Mankind

A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Fear #Happy Life #Men

When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Cat #Animal #Play

Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Inspirational #Being Yourself #Freedom

We can be knowledgeable with other men's knowledge, but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Wise #Wisdom #Knowledge

When I am attached by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books. They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Depression #Running #Book

The most fruitful and natural exercise for our minds is, in my opinion, conversation.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Exercise #Mind #Opinion

Confidence in the goodness of another is good proof of one's own goodness.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Confidence #Philosophical #Goodness

I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself, and not by borrowing.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Respect #Acceptance #Self Reliance

The lack of wealth is easily repaired but the poverty of the soul is irreplaceable.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Inspirational #Character #Soul

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Life #Integrity #Law Of Attraction

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Respect #Self Esteem #Being Alone

I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Education #Teaching #School

I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Miracle #Monsters #World

On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Inspiration #Kids #Humility

Stubborn and ardent clinging to one's opinion is the best proof of stupidity.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Stupid #Stubborn #Opinion

In nine lifetimes, you'll never know as much about your cat as your cat knows about you.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Cat #Nine #Lifetime

I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Study #Physics #Metaphysics

The worst condition of humans is when they lose knowledge and control of themselves.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Knowledge #Self #Behavior

In the examples that I here bring in of what I have [read], heard, done or said, I have refrained from daring to alter even the smallest and most indifferent circumstances. My conscience falsifies not an iota; for my knowledge I cannot answer.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Change #Knowledge #Done

A straight oar looks bent in the water. What matters is not merely that we see things but how we see them.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#What Matters #Water #Looks

I want death to find me planting my cabbages.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Death #Nature #Want

A man should ever be ready booted to take his journey.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Men #Journey #Should

The soul which has no fixed purpose in life is lost; to be everywhere, is to be nowhere.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Soul #Lost Friendship #Purpose

It should be noted that children at play are not playing about; their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Children #Games #Play

A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Wise #Being Yourself #Men

There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Inspirational #Motivational #Success

He who does not live in some degree for others, hardly lives for himself.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Degrees #Doe

It is a dangerous and fateful presumption, besides the absurd temerity that it implies, to disdain what we do not comprehend. For after you have established, according to your fine undertstanding, the limits of truth and falsehood, and it turns out that you must necessarily believe things even stranger than those you deny, you are obliged from then on to abandon these limits.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Believe #Limits #Stranger

I know that the arms of friendship are long enough to reach from the one end of the world to the other
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Long #World #Arms

Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Time #Wrinkles #Mind

Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Happiness #Masterpiece #Glorious

The most evident token and apparent sign of true wisdom is a constant and unconstrained rejoicing.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Rejoice #Constant #True Wisdom

Obsession is the wellspring of genius and madness.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Genius #Madness #Obsession

I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Finding Yourself #Fleeing #Finding Oneself

The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mold. The same reason that makes us wrangle with a neighbor creates a war betwixt princes.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#War #Equality #Soul

No-one is exempt from speaking nonsense – the only misfortune is to do it solemnly.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Nonsense #Misfortunes

When I quote others I do so in order to express my own ideas more clearly.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Golf #Order #Ideas

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself, and apply myself to them if they will not apply themselves to me.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Expectations #Able #Events

The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them... Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Lying #Years #Satisfaction

I speak the truth not so much as I would, but as much as I dare, and I dare a little more as I grow older.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Life #Success #Truth

A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Marriage #Husband #Funny Relationship

He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Noise #Arguing #Argument

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Inspirational #Funny #Life

There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Wisdom #Agreement #Political

The beautiful souls are they that are universal, open, and ready for all things.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Beauty #Beautiful #Soul

Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Marriage #Wedding #Bird

Let us permit nature to have her way. She understands her business better than we do.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Nature #Rivers #Earth Day

Excellent memories are often coupled with feeble judgments.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Memories #Judgment #Excellent

It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Communication #Knowledge #Brain

We are all patchwork, and so shapeless and diverse in composition that each bit, each moment, plays its own game.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Games #Play #Moments

Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Memories #Wish #Mental Illness

There is as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and others.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Differences

Let us a little permit nature to take her own way; she better understands her own affairs than we.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Experience #Littles #Way

The word is half his that speaks, and half his that hears it.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Inspiring #Half #Speak

A strong imagination begetteth opportunity.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Inspirational #Strong #Opportunity

Things are not bad in themselves, but our cowardice makes them so.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Cowardice

Those who have compared our life to a dream were right... we were sleeping wake, and waking sleep.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Life #Dream #Sleep

Rejoice in the things that are present; all else is beyond thee.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Live In The Moment #Mindfulness #Live In The Present

If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Love #Marriage #Good Marriage

We trouble our life by thoughts about death, and our death by thoughts about life.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Death #Life And Death #Trouble

A man must keep a little back shop where he can be himself without reserve. In solitude alone can he know true freedom.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Freedom #Men #Solitude

The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Courage #Virtue #True Courage

If I speak of myself in different ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Reflection #Looks #Way

To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquility in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately. All other things, ruling, hoarding, building, are only little appendages and props, at most.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Book #Character #Winning

There is no more expensive thing than a free gift.
-- Michel de Montaigne

To begin depriving death of its greatest advantage over us, let us adopt a way clean contrary to that common one; let us deprive death of its strangeness, let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death... We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere." "To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Men #Practice #Waiting

No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Silly #Men #Belief

If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Love #Life #Friendship

The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Happiness #Certain #Cheerfulness

The least strained and most natural ways of the soul are the most beautiful; the best occupations are the least forced.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Happiness #Beautiful #Soul

A man should not so much respect what he eats, as with whom he eats.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Men #Should

The soul that has no established aim loses itself
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Soul #Aim

Experience has taught me this, that we undo ourselves by impatience. Misfortunes have their life and their limits, their sickness and their health.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Patience #Limits #Taught

Saying is one thing, doing another. We must consider the sermon and the preacher distinctly and apart.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Preacher

There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Inspirational #Music #Dance

The births of all things are weak and tender and therefore we should have our eyes intent on beginnings.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#New Beginnings #Eye #Birth

Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Self #Want #Faces

Ambition is not a vice of little people.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Inspirational #Ambition #People

There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Life #Humility #Men

I quote others in order to better express myself.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Order #Quotations

My home...It is my retreat and resting place from wars, I try to keep this corner as a haven against the tempest outside, as I do another corner in my soul.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#War #Home #Soul

He who fears he will suffer, already suffers from his fear.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Wisdom #Emotional #Suffering

Kings and philosophers defecate, and so do ladies.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Kings #Philosopher

Valor is strength, not of legs and arms, but of heart and soul; it consists not in the worth of our horse or our weapons, but in our own.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Horse #Heart #Soul

~The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them ~
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Lying #Use #Value Of Life

Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Death #Dying #Obligation

There never were, in the world, two opinions alike, no more than two hairs, or two grains; the most universal quality is diversity.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Two #Hair #Justice

Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Confidence #Self Esteem #Acceptance

Don't discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose; if you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Praise #Belittle

When I dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep; yes, and when I walk alone in a beautiful orchard, if my thoughts drift to far-off matters for some part of the time for some other part I lead them back again to the walk, the orchard, to the sweetness of this solitude, to myself.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Beautiful #Sleep #Simplicity

Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Political #Religion #Atheism

It is setting a high value upon our opinions to roast men and women alive on account of them.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Men #Alive #Opinion

I am afraid that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, and that we have more curiosity than understanding. We grasp at everything, but catch nothing except wind.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Eye #Wind #Understanding

Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Inspirational #Life #Wise

Our speech has its weaknesses and its defects, like all the rest. Most of the occasions for the troubles of the world are grammatical.
-- Michel de Montaigne

#Education #World #Speech