Michel De Montaigne quotes: top famous quotes and sayings by Michel De Montaigne

Top Michel De Montaigne Quotes

Browse top 144 most favorite famous quotes and sayings by Michel De Montaigne.

Favorite Michel De Montaigne Quotes

1. "I quote others only to better express myself." ~ Michel De Montaigne

2. "My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened." ~ Michel De Montaigne

3. "Off I go, rummaging about in books for sayings which please me." ~ Michel De Montaigne

4. "Saying is one thing and doing is another" ~ Michel De Montaigne

5. "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

6. "Certainly, if he still has himself, a man of understanding has lost nothing." ~ Michel De Montaigne

7. "I know not what quintessence of all this mixture, which, seizing my whole will, carried it to plunge and lose itself in his, and that having seized his whole will, brought it back with equal concurrence and appetite to plunge and lose itself in mine." ~ Michel De Montaigne

8. "Man (in good earnest) is a marvellous vain, fickle, and unstable subject, and on whom it is very hard to form any certain and uniform judgment." ~ Michel De Montaigne

9. "The finest souls are those that have the most variety and suppleness." ~ Michel De Montaigne

10. "When I express my opinions it is so as to reveal the measure of my sight not the measure of the thing." ~ Michel De Montaigne

11. "Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens." ~ Michel De Montaigne

12. "When I am attacked 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

13. "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

14. "I speak to the paper, as I speak to the first person I meet." ~ Michel De Montaigne

15. "I find I am much prouder of the victory I obtain over myself, when, in the very ardor of dispute, I make myself submit to my adversary's force of reason, than I am pleased with the victory I obtain over him through his weakness." ~ Michel De Montaigne

16. "C'est étrange que les choses en soient venues à ce point à notre époque, et que la philosophie ne soit, même pour les gens intelligents, qu'un mot creux et chimérique, qui ne soit d'aucune utilité et n'ait aucune valeur, ni dans l'opinion générale, ni dansla réalité. Je crois que la cause en est que ses grandes avenues ont été occupées par des discussions oiseuses. On a grand tort de la décrire comme quelque chose d'inaccessible aux enfants, et de lui faire un visage renfrogné, sourcilleux et terrible : qui donc lui a mis ce masque d'un visage blême et hideux? Il n'est rien de plus gai, de plus allègre et de plus enjoué, et pour un peu, je dirais même : folâtre... Elle ne prêche que la fête et le bon temps. Une mine triste et abattue : voila qui montre bien que ce n'est pas laqu'elle habite." ~ Michel De Montaigne

17. "It is an absolute perfection and virtually divine to know how to enjoy our being rightfully. We seek other conditions because we do not understand the use of our own, and go outside of ourselves because we do not know what it is like inside. Yet there is no use our mounting on stilts, for on stilts we must still walk on our own legs. And on the loftiest throne in the world we are still sitting only on our own rump." ~ Michel De Montaigne

18. "Cada cual llama barbarie a lo que no forma parte de su costumbre." ~ Michel De Montaigne

19. "In the year of Christ 1571, at the age of thirty-eight, on the last day of February, anniversary of his birth, Michel de Montaigne, lon weary of the servitude of the court and of public employments, while still entire, retired to the bosom of the learned Virgins [Muses], where in calm and freedom from all cares he will spend what little remains of his life now more than half run out. If the fates permit, he will completethis abode, this sweet ancestral retreat; and he has consecrated it to his freedom, tranquility, and leisure." ~ Michel De Montaigne

20. "When a man is commonplace in discussion yet valued for what he writes that shows that his talents lie in his borrowed sources not in himself." ~ Michel De Montaigne

21. "Fortune does us neither good nor hurt; she only presents us the matter and the seed, which our soul, more powerful than she, turns and applies as she best pleases; the sole cause and sovereign mistress of her own happy or unhappy condition." ~ Michel De Montaigne

22. "When we spread our name by scattering it into many mouths we call that ‘increasing our renown'; we wish our name to be favourably received there and that it may gain from such an increase. That is what is most pardonable in such a design. But carried to excess this malady makes many seek to be on others' lips, no matter how. Trogus Pompeius says of Herostratus, and Livy says of Manlius, that they were more desirous of a wide reputation than a good one.42 That is a common vice. We are more concerned that men should talk of us than of how they talk of us; and we are far more concerned that our name should run from mouth to mouth than under what circumstances it should do so." ~ Michel De Montaigne

23. "It is a disaster that wisdom forbids you to be satisfied with yourself and always sends you away dissatisfied and fearful, whereas stubbornness and foolhardiness fill their hosts with joy and assurance." ~ Michel De Montaigne

24. "All we do is to look after the opinions and learning of others: we ought to make them our own." ~ Michel De Montaigne

25. "I listen with attention to the judgment of all men;but so far as I can remember,I have followed none but my own." ~ Michel De Montaigne

26. "There is as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and others." ~ Michel De Montaigne

27. "I had rather fashion my mind than furnish it." ~ Michel De Montaigne

28. "Not being able to govern events, I govern myself" ~ Michel De Montaigne

29. "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

30. "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

31. "Natural inclinations are assisted and reinforced by education, but they are hardly ever altered or overcome." ~ Michel De Montaigne

32. "In general I ask for books that make use of learning, not those that build it up." ~ Michel De Montaigne

33. "My business is only to keep myself in motion, whilst motion pleases me; I only walk for the walk's sake." ~ Michel De Montaigne

34. "Rejoice in the things that are present; all else is beyond thee." ~ Michel De Montaigne

35. "A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband." ~ Michel De Montaigne

36. "A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself." ~ Michel De Montaigne

37. "The least strained and most natural ways of the soul are the most beautiful; the best occupations are the least forced." ~ Michel De Montaigne

38. "Kendimizden kaçmamiz, kendimizde olup biteni bilmememizdendir." ~ Michel De Montaigne

39. "Bir amaca baglanmayan ruh yolunu kaybeder. Çünkü her yerde olmak, hiçbir yerde olmamaktir." ~ Michel De Montaigne

40. "Le monde n'est qu'une balançoire perpétuelle. Toutes choses y balancent sans cesse." ~ Michel De Montaigne

41. "Je souhaiterais bien avoir plus parfaite intelligence des choses, mais je ne la veux pas acheter si cher qu'elle coûte. Mon dessein et de passer doucement, et non laborieusement, ce qui me reste de vie." ~ Michel De Montaigne

42. "That philosopher who orders us to conceal ourselves and to care for no one but ourselves and who wishes us to remain unknown to others, wants us even less to be held in honour and glory by them. He also advised Idomeneus in no wise to govern his actions by reputation or by common opinion, except to avoid such incidental disadvantages as the contempt of men might bring him.10 Those words are infinitely true, in my opinion, and are reasonable." ~ Michel De Montaigne

43. "We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void." ~ Michel De Montaigne

44. "Every other knowledge is harmful to him who does not have knowledge of goodness." ~ Michel De Montaigne

45. "Il n'est si homme de bien, qu'il mette à l'examen des loix toutes ses actions et pensées, qui ne soit pendable dix fois en sa vie.(There is no man so good that if he placed all his actions and thoughts under the scrutiny of the laws, he would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.)" ~ Michel De Montaigne

46. "The most fruitful and natural exercise for our minds is, in my opinion, conversation." ~ Michel De Montaigne

47. "The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness." ~ Michel De Montaigne

48. "Obsession is the wellspring of genius and madness." ~ Michel De Montaigne

49. "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

50. "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

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