Michel De Montaigne Quotes

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.

~ Michel De Montaigne

No pleasure has any savor for me without communication.

~ Michel De Montaigne

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.

~ Michel De Montaigne

For truly it is to be noted, that children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.

~ Michel De Montaigne

Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.

~ Michel De Montaigne

Covetousness is both the beginning and the end of the devil's alphabet - the first vice in corrupt nature that moves, and the last which dies.

~ Michel De Montaigne

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

~ Michel De Montaigne

It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness. A spirited mind never stops within itself; it is always aspiring and going beyond its strength.

~ Michel De Montaigne

Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.

~ Michel De Montaigne

Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.

~ Michel De Montaigne

It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.

~ Michel De Montaigne

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

~ Michel De Montaigne

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

~ Michel De Montaigne

Confidence in the goodness of another is good proof of one's own goodness.

~ Michel De Montaigne

Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky.

~ Michel De Montaigne

There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge.

~ Michel De Montaigne

We can be knowledgable with other men's knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.

~ Michel De Montaigne

There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.

~ Michel De Montaigne

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

~ Michel De Montaigne

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

I put forward formless and unresolved notions, as do those who publish doubtful questions to debate in the schools, not to establish the truth but to seek it.

~ Michel De Montaigne

Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.

~ Michel De Montaigne

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

~ Michel De Montaigne

How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables.

~ Michel De Montaigne

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, a market which has nothing free but the entrance.

~ Michel De Montaigne

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

~ Michel De Montaigne

The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.

~ Michel De Montaigne

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

~ Michel De Montaigne

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

My trade and art is to live.

~ Michel De Montaigne

The public weal requires that men should betray, and lie, and massacre.

~ Michel De Montaigne

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

~ Michel De Montaigne