Michel de Montaigne Quotes - Page 18

• 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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• 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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• 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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• Have you known how to take rest? You have done more than he who hath taken empires and cities.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Taken, Cities, Done

  Michel de Montaigne (2014). “Shakespeare's Montaigne: The Florio Translation of the Essays, A Selection”, p.330, New York Review of Books

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• The honor we receive from those that fear us, is not honor; those respects are paid to royalty and not to me.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Respect, Honor, Royalty

  Michel de Montaigne (2013). “Michel de Montaigne: Selected Essays”, p.55, Courier Corporation

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• Other passions have objects to flatter them, and seem to content and satisfy them for a while; there is power in ambition, pleasure in luxury, and pelf in covetousness; but envy can gain nothing but vexation.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Passion, Ambition, Luxury

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• And I loathe people who find it harder to put up with a gown askew than with a soul askew and who judge a man by his bow, his bearing and his boots.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Educational, Men, People

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

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• Perhaps it is not without reason that we attribute facility in belief and conviction to simplicity and ignorance; for it seems to me I once learned that belief was sort of an impression made on our mind, and that the softer it is the less resistant t.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Ignorance, Simplicity, Mind

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• There is no course of life so weak and sottish as that which is managed by order, method, and discipline.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Order, Discipline, Virtue

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• I give my opinion not as being good, but as being my own.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Giving, Opinion, Be Good

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• I set forth notions that are human and my own, simply as human notions considered in themselves, not as determined and decreed by heavenly ordinance.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Determined, Notion, Heavenly

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.234, Stanford University Press

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• It makes me hate accepting things that are probable when they are held up before me as infallibly true. I prefer these words which tone down and modify the hastiness of our propositions: "Perhaps, In some sort, Some, They say, I think," and the like.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Hate, Thinking, Down And

  Michel de Montaigne (1946). “The essays”

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• Those that will combat use and custom by the strict rules of grammar do but jest

  Michel de Montaigne

  Use, Grammar, Combat

  Michel de Montaigne, John Florio, Michael Innes (1928). “Montaigne's essays”

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• It is putting a very high price on one's conjectures to have someone roasted alive on their account.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Alive, Conjecture, Accounts

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• I seek in the reading of books, only to please myself, by an honest diversion.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Book, Reading, Honest

  Michel de Montaigne (2013). “Michel de Montaigne: Selected Essays”, p.71, Courier Corporation

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• We should be similarly wary of accepting common opinions; we should judge them by the ways of reason not by popular vote.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Popular Vote, Judging, Political

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

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• The shortest way to arrive at glory should be to do that for conscience which we do for glory. And the virtue of Alexander appears to me with much less vigor in his theater than that of Socrates in his mean and obscure. I can easily conceive Socrates in the place of Alexander, but Alexander in that of Socrates I cannot.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Mean, Vigor, Way

  Michel de Montaigne, Charles Cotton (1711). “Essays of Michael Seigneur de Montaigne: In Three Books with Marginal Notes and Quotations. And an Account of the Author's Life. With a Short Character of the Author and Translator,”, p.29

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• Whatever I may be, I want to be elsewhere than on paper. My art and my industry have been employed in making myself good for something; my studies, in teaching me to do, not to write. I have put all my efforts into forming my life. That is my trade and my work.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Education, Art, Teaching

  Michel de Montaigne (2003). “The Complete Works: Essays, Travel Journal, Letters”, Everyman's Library

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• Pleasure itself is painful at the bottom.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Painful, Pleasure, Bottom

  Michel de Montaigne (1701). “An Abstract of the most Curious and Excellent Thoughts in Seigneur de Montaigne's Essays ... Done into English from the French original.Jpp. 227”, p.189

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• There is no passion that so much transports men from their right judgments as anger. No one would demur upon punishing a judge with death who should condemn a criminal upon the account of his own choler; why then should fathers and pedants be any more allowed to whip and chastise children in their anger? It is then no longer correction bat revenge. Chastisement is instead of physic to children; and should we suffer a physician who should be animated against and enraged at his patient?

  Michel de Montaigne

  Children, Revenge, Father

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• The only good histories are those written by those who had command in the events they describe.

  Michel de Montaigne

  History, Events, Command

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• Learning is not to be tacked to the mind, but we must fuse and blend them together, not merely giving the mind a slight tincture, but a thorough and perfect dye. And if we perceive no evident change and improvement, it would be better to leave it alone; learning is a dangerous weapon, and apt to wound its master if it be wielded by a feeble hand, and by one not well acquainted with its use.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Learning, Hands, Giving

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• The strength of any plan depends on the time. Circumstances and things eternally shift and change.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Circumstances, Plans, Depends

  Michel de Montaigne (1949). “Selected Essays: The Charles Cotton - W.C. Hazlitt Translation, Rev. and Edited, with an Introd”

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• Natural inclinations are assisted and reinforced by education, but they are hardly ever altered or overcome.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Overcoming, Natural, Altered

  Michel de Montaigne, John Michael Cohen (1959). “Essays”, Penguin Classics

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