Top 100 Quotes About Montaigne
#1. As Michel de Montaigne observed, "The least strained and most natural ways of the soul are the most beautiful; the best occupations are the least forced."
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Gretchen Rubin
#2. I'm quite influenced in this by one of my heroes, Montaigne, who thought a man's real task was to render as honest an account of himself as he could.
Robert Sheckley
#3. I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided if greater pains be the consequence, and pains to be coveted that will terminate in greater pleasures. - MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
Anthony Robbins
#4. Montaigne [puts] not self-satisfied understanding but a consciousness astonished at itself at the core of human existence.
Maurice Merleau Ponty
#5. The finest thing in the world is knowing how to belong to oneself.
Michel de Montaigne
Laurie Stevens
#6. By travelling across frontiers, on horseback and in the imagination, Montaigne invited us to to exchange local prejudices and the self division they induced for less constraining identities as citizens of the world.
Alain De Botton
#7. The conduct of our lives is the true reflection of our thoughts. - MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
Gretchen Rubin
#8. The manner in which Epictetus, Montaigne, and Salomon de Tultie wrote, is the most usual, the most suggestive, the most remembered, and the oftener quoted; because it is entirely composed of thoughts born from the common talk of life.
Blaise Pascal
#9. Montaigne says somewhere that in early youth the joy of life lies in the feet.
Willa Cather
#10. Wilson was very much school of Montaigne. Like Montaigne, he was not exactly misogynistic but he felt that the challenge of another male mind was the highest sort of human exchange while possession of a beautiful woman was also of intense importance to him.
Gore Vidal
#11. Quotations are powerful tools. Michel de Montaigne, the father of all essayists, observed, 'I quote others only to better express myself.' Intrepid quotations detective Ralph Keyes helps us to discover the clear truth about exactly what was said and who exactly said it.
Richard Lederer
#12. To paraphrase Montaigne - even when you're sitting on the highest throne in the world, you're still sitting on your arse.
M.J. Carter
#13. I THINK IT IS MONTAIGNE who has said that ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head,
Jon Meacham
#14. Montaigne is wrong in declaring that custom ought to be followed simply because it is custom, and not because it is reasonable or just.
Blaise Pascal
#15. For centuries censorship has created best sellers because, as Michel de Montaigne said, 'To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind for it.' (Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature)
Margaret Bald
#16. Life versus Death becomes, as Montaigne pointed out, Old Age versus Death.
Julian Barnes
#17. The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make to them; a man may live long, yet get little from life. Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will - Montaigne, Essays
Michel De Montaigne
#18. I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
#19. We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. MONTAIGNE
Sogyal Rinpoche
#20. As Montaigne wrote, observing late-sixteenth-century life, To die of age is a rare, singular, and extraordinary death, and so much less natural than others: it is the last and extremest kind of dying.
Atul Gawande
#21. My law-givers are Erasmus and Montaigne, not Moses and St Paul.
E. M. Forster
#22. (A writer's working space, Montaigne also believed, ought to have a good view of the cemetery; it tended to sharpen one's thinking.)
Oliver Burkeman
#23. Between Malraux, Balzac, and Montaigne, I choose Montaigne. Montaigne will survive all the others, because the essay, meaning direct communication between the writer and his reader, will outlast the novel, by at least a thousand years.
Gore Vidal
#24. (in which, along with Montaigne, we raise the question of whether a book you have read and completely forgotten, and which you have even forgotten you have read, is still a book you have read)
Pierre Bayard
#25. to cite Montaigne, "Nature always gives us happier laws than those we give ourselves."125
Mark Helprin
#26. To die from 'a draining away of one's strength caused by extreme old age' was in Montaigne's day a 'rare, singular and extraordinary death.' Nowadays we assume it as our right.
Julian Barnes
#27. Montaigne says, "Books are a languid pleasure," but I find certain books vital and spermatic, not leaving the reader what he was; he shuts the book a richer man. I would never willingly read any other than such.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#28. 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
#30. As the seventeenth-century French philosopher Montaigne once said, "My life has been filled with terrible misfortune, most of which never happened.
Kristin Neff
#31. It is not in Montaigne, but in myself, that I find all that I see in him.
Blaise Pascal
#32. According to Montaigne, it was the oppressive notion that we had complete mental control over our bodies, and the horror of departing from this portrait of normality, that had left the man unable to perform sexually.
Alain De Botton
#33. Let's say I have a mystical soul and a rational brain, and, like Montaigne, I am incapable of choosing between them. I don't know if I believe in God, but I am often tempted to believe.
Francois Mitterrand
#34. If I were a writer of books, I would compile a register, with a comment, of the various deaths of men: he who should teach men to die would at the same time teach them to live. - Michel de Montaigne, "That to Study Philosophy Is to Learn to Die
Paul Kalanithi
#35. I fear only that which I love, says man, according to Montaigne. Woman replies: I love only that which I fear.
Jose Bergamin
#36. [He who can describe how his heart is ablaze is burning on a small pyre] ~ Petrarch, Sonnet 137
(from Montaigne, On sadness)
Francesco Petrarca
#37. Sixteenth-century philosopher Michel de Montaigne once wrote, When I play with my cat, how do I know that she is not playing with me rather than I with her?
Michio Kaku
#38. As Michel de Montaigne observed, "No wind favors him who has no destined port.
John C. Maxwell
#39. I could recite you the whole of Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, Titus Livius, Tacitus, Strada, Jornandes, Dante, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Spinoza, Machiavelli, and Bossuet. I name only the most important." "You
Alexandre Dumas
#40. Montaigne simply turns his mind loose and writes whatever he feels like writing. Mostly, he wants to say that reason is not a special, unique gift of human beings, marking us off from the rest of nature.
Lewis Thomas
#41. This book of Montaigne the world has endorsed by translating it into all tongues.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#42. This great world of ours is the looking-glass in which we must gaze to come to know ourselves from the right slant. Michel de Montaigne
Patti Miller
#43. Get a purge for your brain. It will do better than for your stomach. - Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
David Allen
#44. I say that male and female are cast in the same mold; except for education and habits, the difference is not great.
Michel De Montaigne
#45. We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.
Michel De Montaigne
#46. The recognition of virtue is not less valuable from the lips of the man who hates it, since truth forces him to acknowledge it; and though he may be unwilling to take it into his inmost soul, he at least decks himself out in its trappings.
Michel De Montaigne
#47. Whoever will imagine a perpetual confession of ignorance, a judgment without leaning or inclination, on any occasion whatever, hasa conception of Pyrrhonism.
Michel De Montaigne
#48. It is not reasonable that art should win the place of honor over our great and powerful mother Nature. We have so overloaded the beauty and richness of her works by our inventions that we have quite smothered her.
Michel De Montaigne
#49. He who is not sure of his memory, should not undertake the trade of lying.
Michel De Montaigne
#50. Those who have compared our life to a dream were right ... we were sleeping wake, and waking sleep.
Michel De Montaigne
#51. Knowledge is an excellent drug; but no drug has virtue enough to preserve itself from corruption and decay, if the vessel be tainted and impure wherein it is put to keep.
Michel De Montaigne
#52. Tis faith alone that vividly and certainly comprehends the deep mysteries of our religion.
Michel De Montaigne
#53. He that first likened glory to a shadow did better than he was aware of. They are both of them things excellently vain. Glory also, like a shadow, goes sometimes before the body, and sometimes in length infinitely exceeds it.
Michel De Montaigne
#54. The perpetual work of your life is but to lay the foundation of death.
Michel De Montaigne
#55. Those sciences which govern the morals of mankind, such as Theology and Philosophy, make everything their concern: no activity is so private or so secret as to escape their attention or their jurisdiction.
Michel De Montaigne
#56. We are Christians by the same title as we are natives of Perigord or Germany.
Michel De Montaigne
#58. If I am to serve as an instrument of deceit, at least let it be with a clear conscience. I do not want to be considered either so affectionate or so loyal a servant as to be found fit to betray anyone.
Michel De Montaigne
#59. And to bring in a new word by the head and shoulders, they leave out the old one.
Michel De Montaigne
#61. The first lessons with which we should irrigate his mind should be those which teach him to know himself, and to know how to die ... and to live.
Michel De Montaigne
#62. Who does not see that I have taken a road along which I shall go, without stopping and without effort, as long as there is ink and paper in the world? I cannot keep a record of my life by my actions; fortune places them too low. I keep it by my thoughts.
Michel De Montaigne
#63. A man should keep for himself a little back shop, all his own, quite unadulterated, in which he establishes his true freedom and chief place of seclusion and solitude.
Michel De Montaigne
#65. Not because Socrates said so, ... I look upon all men as my compatriots.
Michel De Montaigne
#66. Virtue rejects facility to be her companion. She requires a craggy, rough and thorny way.
Michel De Montaigne
#68. People of our time are so formed for agitation and ostentation that goodness, moderation, equability, constancy, and such quiet and obscure qualities are no longer felt.
Michel De Montaigne
#69. Examples teach us that in military affairs, and all others of a like nature, study is apt to enervate and relax the courage of man, rather than to give strength and energy to the mind.
Michel De Montaigne
#70. An able reader often discovers in other people's writings perfections beyond those that the author put in or perceived, and lends them richer meanings and aspects.
Michel De Montaigne
#71. It is quite normal to see good intentions, when not carried out with moderation, urging men to actions which are truly vicious.
Michel De Montaigne
#73. The most evident token and apparent sign of true wisdom is a constant and unconstrained rejoicing.
Michel De Montaigne
#75. There is nothing on which men are commonly more intent than on making a way for their opinions.
Michel De Montaigne
#76. Any person of honor chooses rather to lose his honor than to lose his conscience.
Michel De Montaigne
#77. There is no doubt that Greek and Latin are great and handsome ornaments, but we buy them too dear.
Michel De Montaigne
#79. It is in vain that we get upon stilts, for once on them, it is still with our legs that we must walk. And on the highest throne in the world we are still sitting on our own ass.
Michel De Montaigne
#81. I determine nothing; I do not comprehend things; I suspend judgment; I examine.
Michel De Montaigne
#82. All we do is to look after the opinions and learning of others: we ought to make them our own.
Michel De Montaigne
#83. Malice sucks up the greatest part of its own venom, and poisons itself.
Michel De Montaigne
#84. Wisdom is a solid and entire building, of which every piece keeps its place and bears its mark.
Michel De Montaigne
#85. The Stoics forbid this emotion to their sages as being base and cowardly.
Michel De Montaigne
#86. If I can, I will prevent my death from saying anything not first said by my life.
Michel De Montaigne
#87. Oh, what a valiant faculty is hope, that in a mortal subject, and in a moment, makes nothing of usurping infinity, immensity, eternity, and of supplying its masters indigence, at its pleasure, with all things he can imagine or desire!
Michel De Montaigne
#89. A volunteer, you assign yourself specific roles and risks according to your judgement of their brilliance and importance, and you see when life itself may be justifiably devoted to them.
Michel De Montaigne
#90. Light griefs can speak: deep sorrows are dumb." - Seneca, Hippolytus, act ii. scene 3.] A
Michel De Montaigne
#91. Repentance is but a denying of our will, and an opposition of our fantasies.
Michel De Montaigne
#92. The art of dining well is no slight art, the pleasure no slight pleasure.
Michel De Montaigne
#94. Difficulty is a coin the learned make use of like jugglers, to conceal the inanity of their art.
Michel De Montaigne
#95. The lack of wealth is easily repaired but the poverty of the soul is irreplaceable.
Michel De Montaigne
#96. I put forward formless and unresolved notions, as do those who publish doubtful questions to debate in the schools, not to establish the truth but to seek it.
Michel De Montaigne
#97. If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not even think of themselves.
Michel De Montaigne
#98. I admire the assurance and confidence everyone has in himself, whereas there is hardly anything I am sure I know or that I dare give my word I can do.
Michel De Montaigne
#99. In order always to learn something from others (which is the finest school there can be), I observe in my travels this practice: I always steer those with whom I talk back to the things they know best.
Michel De Montaigne
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