Michel de Montaigne Quotes - Page 17

• Even in the midst of compassion we feel within I know not what tart sweet titillation of malicious pleasure in seeing others suffer; children have the same feeling.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Sweet, Children, Compassion

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• For truth itself does not have the privilege to be employed at any time and in every way; its use, noble as it is, has its circumscriptions and limits.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Time, Truth, Doe

  Michel de Montaigne (1976). “The Complete Essays of Montaigne”

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• Disappointment and feebleness imprint upon us a cowardly and valetudinarian virtue.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Disappointment, Virtue, Cowardly

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• Fear sometimes adds wings to the heels, and sometimes nails them to the ground, and fetters them from moving.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Fear, Moving, Wings

  Michel de Montaigne (1856). “The Works of Michael de Montaigne: Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy”, p.50

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• 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

  Beautiful, Sleep, Simplicity

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• In truth, knowledge is a great and very useful quality; those who despise it give evidence enough of their stupidity. Yet I do not set its value at that extreme measure that some attribute to it.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Giving, Stupidity, Quality

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.319, Stanford University Press

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• There is no passion so much transports the sincerity of judgment as doth anger

  Michel de Montaigne

  Anger, Passion, Management

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• After mature deliberation of counsel, the good Queen to establish a rule and immutable example unto all posterity, for the moderation and required modesty in a lawful marriage, ordained the number of six times a day as a lawful, necessary and competent limit.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Sex, Queens, Numbers

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• Since philosophy is the art which teaches us how to live, and since children need to learn it as much as we do at other ages, why do we not instruct them in it?

  Michel de Montaigne

  Art, Children, Philosophy

  Michel de Montaigne (1991). “The essays of Michel de Montaigne”, Lane, Allen

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• To call out for the hand of the enemy is a rather extreme measure, yet a better one, I think, than to remain in continual fever over an accident that has no remedy. But since all the precautions that a man can take are full of uneasiness and uncertainty, it is better to prepare with fine assurance for the worst that can happen, and derive some consolation from the fact that we are not sure that it will happen.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, Thinking, Hands

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.97, Stanford University Press

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• Human wisdom makes as ill use of her talent when she exercises it in rescinding from the number and sweetness of those pleasures that are naturally our due, as she employs it favorably and well in artificially disguising and tricking out the ills of life to alleviate the sense of them.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Wisdom, Exercise, Numbers

  Michel de Montaigne (1894*). “The Essays of Michel de Montaigne”

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• Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves by railing at it; and yet it is not absolutely railing against anything, to proclaim its defects, because they are in all things to be found, how beautiful or how much to be coveted soever.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Revenge, Criticism, Critics

  "Michel de Montaigne: Selected Essays".

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• When I play with my cat, who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me?

  Michel de Montaigne

  Sports, Cat, Play

  "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations" by John Bartlett, 10th ed., 1919.

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• It is only reasonable to allow the administration of affairs to mothers before their children reach the age prescribed by law at which they themselves can be responsible. But that father would have reared them ill who could not hope that in their maturity they would have more wisdom and competence than his wife.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Family, Mother, Children

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• Age imprints more wrinkles a in the mind, than it does in the face, and souls are never, or very rarely seen, that in growing old do not smell sour and musty. Man moves all together, both towards his perfection and decay.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Moving, Men, Smell

  Michel de Montaigne (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne (Illustrated)”, p.1055, Delphi Classics

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• The utility of living consists not in the length of days, but in the use of time; a man may have lived long, and yet lived but a little.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, Long, Use

  Michel de Montaigne “Annotated Essays of Michel de Montaigne with English Grammar Exercises: by Michel de Montaigne (Author), Robert Powell (Editor)”, Powell Publications, LLC

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• I go out of my way, but rather by license than carelessness.... It is the inattentive reader
  who loses my subject, not I. Some word about it will always be found off in a corner, which will not fail to be sufficient, though it takes little room.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Reading, Littles, Inattention

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”

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• Oh these foolish men! They could not create so much as a worm, but they create gods by the dozens.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, Foolish Man, Religion

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• I enter into discussion and argument with great freedom and ease, inasmuch as opinion finds me in a bad soil to penetrate and take deep root in. No propositions astonish me, no belief offends me, whatever contrast it offers to my own. There is no fancy so frivolous and so extravagant that it does not seem to me quite suitable to the production of the human mind.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Roots, Mind, Ease

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• Beauty is the true prerogative of women, and so peculiarly their own, that our sex, though naturally requiring another sort of feature, is never in its lustre but when puerile and beardless, confused and mixed with theirs.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Beauty, Sex, Confused

  Michel de Montaigne (1849). “Works: Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy; with Notes, Notices, Etc”, p.407

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• There is a plague on Man, the opinion that he knows something.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, Opinion, Plague

  Attributed to "Essais" by Michel de Montaigne, 1595.

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• Anyone who does not feel sufficiently strong in memory should not meddle with lying.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Strength, Strong, Memories

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.23, Stanford University Press

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• Traveling through the world produces a marvelous clarity in the judgment of men. We are all of us confined and enclosed within ourselves, and see no farther than the end of our nose. This great world is a mirror where we must see ourselves in order to know ourselves. There are so many different tempers, so many different points of view, judgments, opinions, laws and customs to teach us to judge wisely on our own, and to teach our judgment to recognize its imperfection and natural weakness.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, Mirrors, Views

  "The Necessity for Ruins, and Other Topics". Book by John Brinckerhoff Jackson, p. 4, 1980.

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• The great and glorious masterpiece of humanity is to know how to live with a purpose.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Inspirational, Life, Humanity

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• All the fame you should look for in life is to have lived it quietly.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Looks, Quiet, Life Is

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