Authors:

Michel de Montaigne Quotes - Page 33

All Quotes Acceptance Affection Age Ambition Anger Appearance Art Atheism Attitude Beauty Belief Birth Change Character Chastity Children Communication Confidence Conscience Cooking Corruption Country Criticism Curiosity Death Desire Difficulty Discipline Diversity Doubt Dying Earth Education Ethics Evil Exercise Experience Failing Fame Fashion Fear Feelings Flattery Food Freedom Friendship Funny Giving Glory God Goodness Grace Greatness Happiness Hate Hatred Heart Heaven History Home Honesty Honor House Human Nature Humanity Humility Hurt Husband Ignorance Imagination Injustice Inspirational Integrity Joy Judgement Judging Judgment Justice Knowledge Language Law Of Attraction Learning Liberty Life Loss Love Lying Madness Marriage Meditation Memories Modesty Morality Mountain Nature Obedience Office Pain Passion Past Perfection Philosophy Pleasure Poetry Positive Poverty Power Praise Pride Property Psychology Purpose Quality Reading Reality Reflection Religion Repentance Reputation Respect Revenge Risk Royalty Running School Science Self Esteem Self Respect Shame Simplicity Sin Skepticism Sleep Society Solitude Soul Sports Spring Study Stupidity Success Suffering Teaching Temperance Time Trade Tradition Tranquility Trust Truth Understanding Values Victory Virtue War Water Weakness Wealth Wife Wine Winning Wisdom Worry Writing Youth
The concern that some women show at the absence of their husbands, does not arise from their not seeing them and being with them, but from their apprehension that their husbands are enjoying pleasures in which they do

The concern that some women show at the absence of their husbands, does not arise from their not seeing them and being with them, but from their apprehension that their husbands are enjoying pleasures in which they do not participate, and which, from their being at a distance, they have not the power of interrupting.

Michel de Montaigne
Marriage, Husband, Distance

The honor of the conquest is rated by the difficulty.

Michel de Montaigne
Honor, Victory, Difficulty

I determine nothing; I do not comprehend things; I suspend judgment; I examine.

Michel de Montaigne
Judgment, Determine

If atoms do, by chance, happen to combine themselves into so many shapes, why have they never combined together to form a house or a slipper? By the same token, why do we not believe that if innumerable letters of the Greek alphabet were poured all over the market-place they would eventually happen to form the text of the Iliad?

Michel de Montaigne
Believe, Science, House

There is a huge gulf between the man who follows the conventions and laws of his country and the man who sets out to regiment them and to change them.

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

For me, who only desire to become wise, not more learned or eloquent, these logical or Aristotelian dispositions of parts are of no use.

Michel de Montaigne
Wise, Desire, Use
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.215

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
School, Debate, Notion
Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.229, Stanford University Press

I set forth a humble and inglorious life; that does not matter. You can tie up all moral philosophy with a common and private life just as well as with a life of richer stuff. Each man bears the entire form of man's estate.

Michel de Montaigne
Life, Philosophy, Humble
Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.611, Stanford University Press

One open way of speaking introduces another open way of speaking, and draws out discoveries, like wine and love.

Michel de Montaigne
Wine, Discovery, Speech
Michel de Montaigne (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne (Illustrated)”, p.1032, Delphi Classics

It is a small soul, buried beneath the weight of affairs, that does not know how to get clean away from them, that cannot put them aside and pick them up again.

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

Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words azimuth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.

Michel de Montaigne
Love, Sports, Nurse
Attributed to "Essais" by Michel de Montaigne, 1595.

And therefore, Reader, I myself am the subject of my book: it is not reasonable that you should employ your leisure on a topic so frivolous and so vain. Therefore, Farewell.

Michel de Montaigne
Book, Farewell, Leisure

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

If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because it was I.

Michel de Montaigne
Love, Men, Giving
Michel de Montaigne (2015). “Essays of Montaigne”, p.256, Xist Publishing

The virtue of the soul does not consist in flying high, but in walking orderly.

Michel de Montaigne
War, Flying High, Soul
Michel de Montaigne (2015). “Montaigne's Essays: Top Essays”, p.830, 谷月社

I see men ordinarily more eager to discover a reason for things than to find out whether the things are so.

Michel de Montaigne
Knowledge, Men, Libertarian
Michel de Montaigne, Marvin Lowenthal (1999). “The Autobiography of Michel de Montaigne: Comprising the Life of the Wisest Man of His Times : His Childhood, Youth, and Prime : His Adventures in Love and Marriage, at Court, and in Office, War, Revolution, and Plague : His Travels at Home and Abroad : His Habits, Tastes, Whims, and Opinions”, p.195, David R. Godine Publisher

Every man may speak truly, but to speak methodically, prudently, and fully is a talent that few men have.

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

Que sçais-je?" (What do I know?)

Michel de Montaigne
Knows
'Essais' (1580) bk. 2, ch. 12 (on discussing the position of the sceptic)

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

Marriage can be compared to a cage: birds outside it despair to enter, and birds within, to escape.

Michel de Montaigne
Marriage, Wedding, Bird

How many worthy men have we known to survive their own reputation, who have seen and suffered the honor and glory most justly acquired in their youth, extinguished in their own presence?

Michel de Montaigne
Men, Honor, Youth
Michel de Montaigne (2013). “Michel de Montaigne: Selected Essays”, p.113, Courier Corporation

Peoples nurtured on freedom and self-government judge any other form of polity to be deformed and unnatural. Those who are used to monarchy do the same .

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

I had rather fashion my mind than furnish it.

Michel de Montaigne
Fashion, Mind
Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.622, Stanford University Press

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
Shadow, Body, Firsts
Michel de Montaigne, Bayle St. John (1866). “Essays [tr. by Cotton”, p.366

The dispersing and scattering our names into many mouths, we call making them more great.

Michel de Montaigne
Names, Mouths, Fame
Michel de Montaigne (1872). “All the Essays of Michael Seigneur de Montaigne”, p.529

You May Also Like: