Michel de Montaigne Quotes - Page 20

• Man is certainly crazy. He could not make a mite, and he makes gods by the dozen.

  Michel de Montaigne

  God, Crazy, Men

  "Essais" by Michel de Montaigne, Book II, Ch. 12, 1595.

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• Virtue shuns ease as a companion. It demands a rough and thorny path.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Ease, Demand, Path

  'Essais' (1580) bk. 2, ch. 11

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• A man never speaks of himself without losing something. What he says in his disfavor is always beleived, but when he commends himself, he arouses mistrust.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, Losing, Speak

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• ..a man may live long, yet live very little. Satisfaction in life depends not on the number of your years, but on your will.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, Satisfaction In Life, Years

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• We are nothing but ceremony; ceremony carries us away, and we leave the substance of things; we hang on to the branches and abandon the trunk and body.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Society, Substance, Body

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

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• There are no truths, only moments of claryty passing for answers.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Answers, Moments, Passing

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• It was truly very good reason that we should be beholden to God only, and to the favour of his grace, for the truth of so noble a belief, since from his sole bounty we receive the fruit of immortality, which consists in the enjoyment of eternal beatitude.... The more we give and confess to owe and render to God, we do it with the greater Christianity.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Giving, Grace, Fruit

  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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• The knowledge of courtesy and good manners is a very necessary study. It is like grace and beauty, that which begets liking and an inclination to love one another at the first sight.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Sight, Grace, Good Man

  Michel de Montaigne (2015). “Montaigne's Essays: Top Essays”, p.84, 谷月社

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• To understand via the heart is not to understand.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Heart

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• A man may be humble through vainglory.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Humble, Men, May

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.479, Stanford University Press

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• Let [children] be able to do all things, and love to do only the good.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Education, Children, Freedom

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.123, Stanford University Press

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• Whatever is enforced by command is more imputed to him who exacts than to him who performs.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Command

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• As for me, then, I love life and cultivate it just as God has been pleased to grant it to us.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Life, Self, Grants

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”

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• There is nothing which so poisons princes as flattery, nor anything whereby wicked men more easily obtain credit and favor with them.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, Wicked, Poison

  Michel de Montaigne (2013). “Michel de Montaigne: Selected Essays”, p.106, Courier Corporation

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• Now there cannot be first principles for men, unless the Divinity has revealed them; all the rest--beginning, middle, and end--isnothing but dreams and smoke.

  Michel de Montaigne

  God, Dream, Knowledge

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• Obstinacy and heat in argument are surest proofs of folly. Is there anything so stubborn, obstinate, disdainful, contemplative, grave, or serious, as an ass?

  Michel de Montaigne

  Stubborn, Serious, Heat

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• If faces were not alike, we could not distinguish men from beasts; if they were not different, we could not tell one man from another.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, Different, Portraiture

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• Behold the hands, how they promise, conjure, appeal, menace, pray, supplicate, refuse, beckon, interrogate, admire, confess, cringe, instruct, command, mock and what not besides, with a variation and multiplication of variation which makes the tongue envious.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Hands, Promise, Variation

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• Pythagoras used to say that life resembles the Olympic Games: a few people strain their muscles to carry off a prize; others bring trinkets to sell to the crowd for gain; and some there are, and not the worst, who seek no other profit than to look at the show and see how and why everything is done; spectators of the life of other people in order to judge and regulate their own.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Life, Order, Games

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• A man may by custom fortify himself against pain, shame, and suchlike accidents; but as to death, we can experience it but once, and are all apprentices when we come to it

  Michel de Montaigne

  Pain, Men, May

  Michel de Montaigne (2013). “Michel de Montaigne: Selected Essays”, p.97, Courier Corporation

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• Everyone gives the title of barbarism to everything that is not in use in his own country.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Country, Giving, Titles

  Michel de Montaigne (2015). “Montaigne's Essays: Top Essays”, p.228, 谷月社

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• Our thoughts are always elsewhere; we are stayed and supported by the hope for a better life, or by the hope that our children will turn out well, or that our name will be famous in the future, or that we shall escape the evils of this life, or that vengeance threatens those who are the cause of our death.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Hope, Children, Thinking

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• What a wonderful thing it is that drop of seed, from which we are produced, bears in itself the impressions, not only of the bodily shape, but of the thoughts and inclinations of our fathers!

  Michel de Montaigne

  Children, Father, Inheritance

  Michel de Montaigne (1946). “The essays”

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• Socrates ... brought human wisdom back down from heaven, where she was wasting her time, and restored her to man.... It is impossible to go back further and lower. He did a great favor to human nature by showing how much it can do by itself.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, Heaven, Favors

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• To die is not to play a part in society; it is the act of a single person. Let us live and laugh among our friends; let us die and sulk among strangers.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Play, Laughing, Stranger

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