Michel de Montaigne Quotes

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.

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

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.

We must learn to endure what we cannot avoid. Our life is composed, like the harmony of the world, of contrary things, also of different tones, sweet and harsh, sharp and flat, soft and loud. If a musician liked only one kind, what would he have to say?

A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.

There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.

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

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

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

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

The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.

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

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

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.

The daughter-in-law of Pythagoras said that a woman who goes to bed with a man ought to lay aside her modesty with her skirt, and put it on again with her petticoat

Man is quite insane. He wouldn?t know how to create a maggot, and he creates Gods by the dozen.

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

Every man has within himself the entire human condition

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

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

No pleasure has any savor for me without communication.

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.

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

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

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.

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

I want death to find me planting my cabbages.

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

Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.

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

Love is like playing the piano. First you must learn to play by the rules, then you must forget the rules and play from your heart. If I were pressed to say why I loved him, I feel that my only reply could be: Because it was he, because it was I.

A man must become wise at his own expense.

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.

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.

There is, nevertheless, a certain respect and a general duty of humanity that ties us, not only to beasts that have life and sense, but even to trees and plants.

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.

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

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.

There is no more expensive thing than a free gift.

There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.

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

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

Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.

When all is summed up, a man never speaks of himself without loss; his accusations of himself are always believed; his praises never.

I would like to suggest that our minds are swamped by too much study and by too much matter just as plants are swamped by too much water or lamps by too much oil; that our minds, held fast and encumbered by so many diverse preoccupations, may well lose the means of struggling free, remaining bowed and bent under the load; except that it is quite otherwise: the more our souls are filled, the more they expand; examples drawn from far-off times show, on the contrary, that great soldiers ad statesmen were also great scholars.

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

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

Excellent memories are often coupled with feeble judgments.