Michel de Montaigne – 40 Quotes

40 Quotes by Michel de Montaigne

My trade and art is to live.

– Michel de Montaigne

The thing I fear most is fear.

– Michel de Montaigne

It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.

– Michel de Montaigne

Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.

– Michel de Montaigne

The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.

– Michel de Montaigne

There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.

– Michel de Montaigne

There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.

– Michel de Montaigne

No pleasure has any savor for me without communication.

– Michel de Montaigne

Marriage, a market which has nothing free but the entrance.

– Michel de Montaigne

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

– Michel de Montaigne

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

– Michel de Montaigne

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

– Michel de Montaigne

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

– Michel de Montaigne

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

– 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

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

– Michel de Montaigne

There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom.

– Michel de Montaigne

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

– Michel de Montaigne

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

– Michel de Montaigne

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

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

– 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

Those who have compared our life to a dream were right… we were sleeping wake, and waking sleep.

– Michel de Montaigne

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

– Michel de Montaigne

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

– 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

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

– 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

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

The confidence in another man’s virtue is no light evidence of a man’s own, and God willingly favors such a confidence.

– Michel de Montaigne

I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind – and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.

– 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

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

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

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

If you don’t know how to die, don’t worry Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you don’t bother your head about it.

– Michel de Montaigne

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.

– Michel de Montaigne

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

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