Michel de Montaigne Quotes - Page 22

• I have ever loved to repose myself, whether sitting or lying, with my heels as high or higher than my head.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Lying, Sitting, Higher

  Michel de Montaigne (1849). “Works: Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy; with Notes, Notices, Etc”, p.535

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• Nature should have been pleased to have made this age miserable, without making it also ridiculous.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Time, Should Have, Age

  Michel de Montaigne (1603). “Essayes”, p.246

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• A little folly is desirable in him that will not be guilty of stupidity.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Stupidity, Littles, Guilty

  Michel de Montaigne, William Hazlitt, Orlando Williams Wight (1866). “Works of Michael de Montaigne: Comprising his essays, journey into Italy, and letters”, p.311

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• Socrates and then Archesilaus used to make their pupils speak first; they spoke afterwards. 'Obest plerumque iss discere volunt authoritas eorum qui docent.' [For those who want to learn, the obstacle can often be the authority of those who teach]

  Michel de Montaigne

  Educational, Often Is, Want

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

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

  Michel de Montaigne

  Soul, Finest, Variety

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• Ambition is not a vice of little people.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Inspirational, Ambition, People

  Michel de Montaigne (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne (Illustrated)”, p.1269, Delphi Classics

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• Is there anything so grave and serious as an ass?

  Michel de Montaigne

  Serious, Ass, Graves

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• The customs and practices of life in society sweep us along.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Practice, Customs

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

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• A well-bred man is always sociable and complaisant.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, Manners, Wells

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• We do not marry for ourselves, whatever we say; we marry just as much or more for our posterity, for our family. The practice and benefit of marriage concerns our race very far beyond us.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Marriage, Race, Practice

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

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• There never were, in the world, two opinions alike, no more than two hairs, or two grains; the most universal quality is diversity.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Two, Hair, Justice

  Michel de Montaigne (2015). “Essays of Montaigne”, p.922, Xist Publishing

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• And as hearbes and trees are bettered and fortified by being transplanted, so formes of speach are embellished and graced by variation.... As in our ordinary language, we shall sometimes meete with excellent phrases, and quaint metaphors, whose blithnesse fadeth through age, and colour is tarnish by to common using them.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Tree, Age, Ordinary

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• One should be ever booted and spurred and ready to depart.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Dying, Death And Dying, Should

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• One must be a little foolish if one does not want to be even more stupid.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Stupid, Silly, Want

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• Lucius Arruntius killed himself, he said, to escape both the future and the past.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Past, Said

  Michel de Montaigne (1979). “Essays”

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• Speech belongs half to the speaker, half to the listener. The latter must prepare to receive it according to the motion it takes.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Communication, Listening, Half

  Michel de Montaigne (1980). “Essays”

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• The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from Custom.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Law, Morality, Tradition

  Michel de Montaigne (1859). “Works of Michael de Montaigne: Comprising His Essays, Journey Into Italy, and Letters, with Notes from All the Commentators, Biographical and Bibliographical Notices, Etc”, p.171

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• It is a dangerous and fateful presumption, besides the absurd temerity that it implies, to disdain what we do not comprehend. For after you have established, according to your fine undertstanding, the limits of truth and falsehood, and it turns out that you must necessarily believe things even stranger than those you deny, you are obliged from then on to abandon these limits.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Believe, Limits, Stranger

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.134, Stanford University Press

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• We are born to inquire after truth; it belongs to a greater power to possess it. It is not, as Democritus said, hid in the bottom of the deeps, but rather elevated to an infinite height in the divine knowledge.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Height, Infinite, Divine

  Michel de Montaigne (2015). “Montaigne's Essays: Top Essays”, p.952, 谷月社

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• My business is only to keep myself in motion, whilst motion pleases me; I only walk for the walk's sake.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Please Me, Sake, Walks

  Michel de Montaigne (1877). “Essays”, p.257

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• Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Death, Dying, Obligation

  Attributed to "Essais" by Michel de Montaigne, Book I, Ch. 7, 1595.

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• I am further of opinion that it would be better for us to have [no laws] at all than to have them in so prodigious numbers as we have.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Law, Numbers, Justice

  Michel de Montaigne, Bayle St. John (1866). “Essays [tr. by Cotton”, p.400

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• Men are nothing until they are excited.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, Excited

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• We are Christians by the same title as we are natives of Perigord or Germany.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Christian, Titles, Germany

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• No man dies before his hour. The time you leave behind was no more yours, than that which was before your birth, and concerneth you no more.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Death, Men, Birth

  Michel de Montaigne (2014). “Shakespeare's Montaigne: The Florio Translation of the Essays, A Selection”, p.31, New York Review of Books

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