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I do not believe, from what I have been told about this people, that there is anything barbarous or savage about them, except that we all call barbarous anything that is contrary to our own habits.

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
People
Tolerance
Contrary
Except
Habit
Told
Barbarous
Call
Savage
Anything
Savages
Believe
Habits

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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I know that the arms of friendship are long enough to reach from the one end of the world to the other
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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.
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If others examined themselves attentively, as I do, they would find themselves, as I do, full of inanity and nonsense. Get rid of it I cannot without getting rid of myself.
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The middle sort of historians (of which the most part are) spoil all they will chew our meat for us.
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There is no desire more natural than the desire of knowledge. (Il n'est desir plus naturel que le desir de connaissance)
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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.
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We must learn to endure what we cannot avoid. Our life is composed, like the harmony of the world, of contrary things, also of different tones, sweet and harsh, sharp and flat, soft and loud. If a musician liked only one kind, what would he have to say?
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I quote others only in order the better to express myself.
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One should be ever booted and spurred and ready to depart.
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He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.
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It is the part of cowardice, not of courage, to go and crouch in a hole under a massive tomb, to avoid the blows of fortune.
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The common notions that we find in credit around us and infused into our souls by our fathers' seed, these seem to be the universal and natural ones. Whence it comes to pass that what is off the hinges of custom, people believe to be off the hinges of reason.
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Amongst all other vices there is none I hate more than cruelty, both by nature and judgment, as the extremest of all vices.
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A man must either imitate the vicious or hate them.
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Saying is one thing and doing is another
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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
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Virtue shuns ease as a companion. It demands a rough and thorny path.
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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.
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Others form man I tell of him, and portray a particular one, very ill-formed, whom I should really make very different from whathe is if I had to fashion him over again. But now it is done.
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Everyone gives the title of barbarism to everything that is not in use in his own country.
Michel de Montaigne