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There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.
Michel de Montaigne
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Michel de Montaigne
Age: 59 †
Born: 1533
Born: February 28
Died: 1592
Died: September 13
Autobiographer
Essayist
French Moralist
Jurist
Philosopher
Poet Lawyer
Politician
Translator
Writer
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
Miquèu Eiquèm de Montanha
Miqueu Eiquem de Montanha
Family
States
Government
Vexation
Much
Managing
Private
Entire
State
Less
More quotes by Michel de Montaigne
Truly man is a marvelously vain, diverse, and undulating object. It is hard to found any constant and uniform judgment on him.
Michel de Montaigne
He who is not sure of his memory, should not undertake the trade of lying.
Michel de Montaigne
It is a thorny undertaking, and more so than it seems, to follow a movement so wandering as that of our mind, to penetrate the opaque depths of its innermost folds, to pick out and immobilize the innumerable flutterings that agitate it.
Michel de Montaigne
Virtue cannot be followed but for herself, and if one sometimes borrows her mask to some other purpose, she presently pulls it away again.
Michel de Montaigne
The most ordinary things, the most common and familiar, if we could see them in their true light, would turn out to be the grandest miracles.
Michel de Montaigne
All opinions in the world agree in this, that pleasure is our end, although they differ as to the means of attaining it.
Michel de Montaigne
Not being able to govern events, I govern myself, and apply myself to them if they will not apply themselves to me.
Michel de Montaigne
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
I am myself the matter of my book.
Michel de Montaigne
What am I to choose? Choose what you please, as long as you choose. There you have a foolish answer, which seems to be the outcome, however, of all Dogmatism, which will not allow us to be ignorant of that which we are ignorant.
Michel de Montaigne
We took advantage of [the Indians'] ignorance and inexperience to incline them the more easily toward treachery, lewdness, avarice, and every sort of inhumanity and cruelty, after the example and pattern of our ways.
Michel de Montaigne
The plague of man is boasting of his knowledge.
Michel de Montaigne
Greatness of soul consists not so much in soaring high and in pressing forward, as in knowing how to adapt and limit oneself.
Michel de Montaigne
He that had never seen a river, imagined the first he met with to be the sea.
Michel de Montaigne
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
We hold death, poverty, and grief for our principal enemies but this death, which some repute the most dreadful of all dreadful things, who does not know that others call it the only secure harbor from the storm and tempests of life, the sovereign good of nature, the sole support of liberty, and the common and sudden remedy of all evils?
Michel de Montaigne
If your doctor does not think it good for you to sleep, to drink wine, or to eat of a particular dish, do not worry I will find you another who will not agree with him.
Michel de Montaigne
The world is but a perpetual see-saw.
Michel de Montaigne
Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre of sentiment and resolution, in the suffering of human accidents.
Michel de Montaigne
Difficulty is a coin the learned make use of like jugglers, to conceal the inanity of their art.
Michel de Montaigne
