Quotes By Michel De Montaigne

No pleasure has any savor for me without communication.

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

Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.

The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.

In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page- boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk - they are all part of the curriculum.

Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.

There is a sort of gratification in doing good which makes us rejoice in ourselves.

A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can.

We are Christians by the same title as we are natives of Perigord or Germany.

I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie.

The ceaseless labour of your life is to build the house of death.

I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.

It is the mind that maketh good or ill, That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor.

The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.

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

A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.

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.

Virtue rejects facility to be her companion. She requires a craggy, rough and thorny way.

The world is all a carcass and vanity, The shadow of a shadow, a play And in one word, just nothing.

Ambition is not a vice of little people.

There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.

I quote others only in order the better to express myself.

No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port.

The beautiful souls are they that are universal, open, and ready for all things.

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

Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle; but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages.

He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.

I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.

Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words azimuth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.

He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.