Quotes By Michel De Montaigne

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

There is perhaps no more obvious vanity than to write of it so vainly.

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

The thing I fear most is fear.

The way of the world is to make laws, but follow custom.

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

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

Any person of honor chooses rather to lose his honor than to lose his conscience.

There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.

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

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

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.

Rejoice in the things that are present; all else is beyond thee.

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

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

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

The worst of my actions or conditions seem not so ugly unto me as I find it both ugly and base not to dare to avouch for them.

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

Confidence in others' honesty is no light testimony of one's own integrity.

How many condemnations I have witnessed more criminal than the crime!

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

Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of soul, impossible.

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

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

One may be humble out of pride.

The finest souls are those that have the most variety and suppleness.

Wit is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not how to use it discreetly.

If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not even think of themselves.

It is a monstrous thing that I will say, but I will say it all the same: I find in many things more restraint and order in my morals than in my opinions, and my lust less depraved than my reason.

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