Michel de Montaigne Quotes - Page 33

• It is much more easy to accuse the one sex than to excuse the other.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Sex, Men, Excuse

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

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• Were I to live my life over again, I should live it just as I have done. I neither complain of the past, nor do I fear the future.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Life, Past, Complaining

  Michel de Montaigne (1872). “All the Essays of Michael Seigneur de Montaigne”, p.678

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• Authors communicate with the people by some special extrinsic mark; I am the first to do so by my entire being, as Michel de Montaigne.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Communication, Self, People

  Michel de Montaigne (1973). “Selections from the Essays”, Harlan Davidson

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• It is indeed the boundary of life, beyond which we are not to pass; which the law of nature has pitched for a limit not to be exceeded.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Law, Age, Limits

  Michel de Montaigne (1853). “The Works of Michael de Montaigne: Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy. With Notes from All the Commentators, Biographical and Bibliographical Notices &c., &c”, p.151

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• Example is a bright looking-glass, universal and for all shapes to look into.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Glasses, Example, Looks

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• Fortune does us neither good nor hurt; she only presents us the matter, and the seed, which our soul, more powerfully than she, turns and applies as she best pleases; being the sole cause and sovereign mistress of her own happy or unhappy condition.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Hurt, Soul, Mistress

  Michel de Montaigne, William Hazlitt (1860). “The Works of Michael de Montaigne: Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy”, p.145

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• True it is that she who escapeth safe and unpolluted from out the school of freedom, giveth more confidence of herself than she who comet sound out of the school of severity and restraint.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Freedom, School, Self Confidence

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• Everyone calls barbarity what he is not accustomed to.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Accustomed, Barbarity

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• The height and value of true virtue consists in the facility, utility, and pleasure of its exercise; so far from difficulty, that boys, as well as men, and the innocent as well as the subtle, may make it their own; and it is by order and good conduct, and not by force, that it is to be acquired.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Exercise, Boys, Men

  Michel de Montaigne (1850). “Works, Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy: With Notes from All the Commentators, Biographical and Bibliographical Notices &c., &c”, p.94

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• How many valiant men we have seen to survive their own reputation!

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, Survival, Reputation

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

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• The premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty; he who has learnt to die has forgot to serve.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Death, Liberty, Premeditation

  Michel de Montaigne, George Savile Marquis of Halifax (1743). “Montaigne's Essays in Three Books: With Notes and Quotations. And an Account of the Author's Life. With a Short Character of the Author and Translator”, p.82

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• Business in a certain sort of men is a mark of understanding, and they are honored for it. Their souls seek repose in agitation, as children do by being rocked in a cradle. They may pronounce themselves as serviceable to their friends as troublesome to themselves. No one distributes his money to others, but every one therein distributes his time and his life. There is nothing of which we are so prodigal as of those two things, of which to be thrifty would be both commendable and useful.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Business, Children, Men

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• To divert myself from a troublesome fancy, it is but to run to my books; they presently fix me to them, and drive the other out of my thoughts, and do not mutiny to see that I have only recourse to them for want of other more, real, natural, and lively conveniences; they always receive me with the same kindness.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Running, Kindness, Real

  Michel de Montaigne (1866). “Works of Michael de Montaigne: Comprising His Essays, Journey Into Italy, and Letters”, p.93

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• Books are a languid pleasure.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Book, Pleasure

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• We must reserve a back shop all our own entirely free, in which to establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and solitude.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Real, Solitude, Liberty

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.177, Stanford University Press

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• But as Nature is the best guide, teaching must be the development of natural inclinations, for which purpose the teacher must watch his pupil and listen to him, not continually bawl words into his ears as if pouring water into a funnel. Good teaching will come from a mind well made rather than well filled.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Teacher, Teaching, Water

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• In my opinion it is the happy living, and not, as Antisthenes said, the happy lying, in which human happiness consists.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Happiness, Lying, Opinion

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• The world is but a perennial movement. All things in it are in constant motion-the earth, the rocks of the Caucasus, the pyramids of Egypt-both with the common motion and with their own.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Rocks, Egypt, Pyramids

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

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• Intoxication is calculated to put heart into the elderly and give them delight in dancing.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Heart, Wine, Elderly

  Michel de Montaigne (1946). “The essays”

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• Lying is a disgraceful vice, and one that Plutarch paints in most disgraceful colors, when he says that it is "affording testimony that one first despises God, and then fears men." It is not possible more happily to describe its horrible, disgusting, and abandoned nature; for can we imagine anything more vile than to be cowards with regard to men, and brave with regard to God.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Lying, Men, Color

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• Princes give mee sufficiently, if they take nothing from me, and doe me much good, if they doe me no hurt: it is all I require of them.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Hurt, Giving, Royalty

  "Montaigne's Essays".

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• Our skin is provided as adequately as theirs with endurance against the assaults of the weather: witness so many nations who have not yet tried the use of any clothes. Our ancient Gauls wore hardly any clothes; nor do the Irish, our neighbors, under so cold a sky.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Sky, Weather, Clothes

  "Complete Essays".

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• We are all of us richer than we think we are.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Thinking, Blessing, Wealth

  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.354

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• Habit is second nature.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Nature, Habit

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

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• But sure there is need of other remedies than dreaming, a weak contention of art against nature.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Dream, Art, Nature

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