Quote

Behold the hands, how they promise, conjure, appeal, menace, pray, supplicate, refuse, beckon, interrogate, admire, confess, cringe, instruct, command, mock and what not besides, with a variation and multiplication of variation which makes the tongue envious.

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
Tongue
Behold
Interrogate
Pray
Variation
Conjure
Refuse
Confess
Multiplication
Praying
Appeal
Instruct
Promise
Besides
Cringe
Makes
Appeals
Envious
Hands
Command
Menace
Admire
Mock
Beckon

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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The shortest way to arrive at glory should be to do that for conscience which we do for glory. And the virtue of Alexander appears to me with much less vigor in his theater than that of Socrates in his mean and obscure. I can easily conceive Socrates in the place of Alexander, but Alexander in that of Socrates I cannot.
Michel de Montaigne
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I consider myself an average man, except in the fact that I consider myself an average man.
Michel de Montaigne
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This idea is more surely understood by interrogation WHAT DO I KNOW? which I bear as my motto with the emblem of a pair of scales.
Michel de Montaigne
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The great and glorious masterpiece of humanity is to know how to live with a purpose.
Michel de Montaigne
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Disappointment and feebleness imprint upon us a cowardly and valetudinarian virtue.
Michel de Montaigne
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When I express my opinions it is so as to reveal the measure of my sight not the measure of the thing.
Michel de Montaigne
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For table-talk, I prefer the pleasant and witty before the learned and the grave in bed, beauty before goodness.
Michel de Montaigne
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When we have got it, we want something else.
Michel de Montaigne
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If not for that of conscience, yet at least for ambition's sake, let us reject ambition, let us disdain that thirst of honor and renown, so low and mendicant that it makes us beg it of all sorts of people.
Michel de Montaigne
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He that had never seen a river imagined the first he met to be the sea and the greatest things that have fallen within our knowledge we conclude the extremes that nature makes of the kind.
Michel de Montaigne
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And obstinacy is the sister of constancy, at least in vigour and stability.
Michel de Montaigne
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The continuous work of our life is to build death.
Michel de Montaigne
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He who fears he will suffer, already suffers from his fear.
Michel de Montaigne
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We have power over nothing except our will.
Michel de Montaigne
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Why dost thou complain of this world? It detains thee not thy own cowardice is the cause, if thou livest in pain.
Michel de Montaigne
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If you have known how to compose your life, you have done a great deal more than the person who knows how to compose a book. You have done more than the one who has taken cities and empires.
Michel de Montaigne
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To say less of yourself than is true is stupidity, not modesty. To pay yourself less than you are worth is cowardice and pusillanimity.
Michel de Montaigne
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All of the days go toward death and the last one arrives there.
Michel de Montaigne
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'Tis the sharpness of our mind that gives the edge to our pains and pleasures.
Michel de Montaigne
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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