Quotes By Michel De Montaigne

We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.

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.

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

Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.

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.

There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.

If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because it was I.

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

Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.

I have often seen people uncivil by too much civility, and tiresome in their courtesy.

The thing I fear most is fear.

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

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

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

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

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