Quote

[Marriage] happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.

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
Within
Getting
Happens
Matrimony
Without
Cages
Birds
Despair
Bird
Marriage

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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Almost all the opinions we have are taken on authority and on credit.
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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.
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Socrates, who was a perfect model in all great qualities, ... hit on a body and face so ugly and so incongruous with the beauty of his soul, he who was so madly in love with beauty.
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Thus we should beware of clinging to vulgar opinions, and judge things by reason's way, not by popular say.
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Man is quite insane. He wouldn?t know how to create a maggot, and he creates Gods by the dozen.
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The soul that has no established aim loses itself
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Honesty is a question of right and wrong, not a matter of policy
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There is nothing so extreme that is not allowed by the custom of some nation or other.
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It would be better to have no laws at all, than to have too many.
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Now, since everything else is furnished with the exact amount of needle and thread required to maintain its being, it is in truth incredible that we alone should be brought into the world in a defective and indigent state, in a state such that we cannot maintain ourselves without external aid.
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Some, either from being glued to vice by a natural attachment, or from long habit, no longer recognize its ugliness.
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Painting myself for others, I have painted my inward self with colors clearer than my original ones. I have no more made my book than my book has made me--a book consubstantial with its author, concerned with my own self, an integral part of my life not concerned with some third-hand, extraneous purpose, like all other books.
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We find ourselves more taken with the running up and down, the games, and puerile simplicities of our children, than we do, afterward, with their most complete actions as if we had loved them for our sport, like monkeys, and not as men.
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The beginnings of all things are weak and tender. We must therefore be clear-sighted in the beginnings, for, as in their budding we discern not the danger, so in their full growth we perceive not the remedy.
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He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.
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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.
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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.
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The oldest and best known evil was ever more supportable than one that was new and untried.
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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.
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He whose mouth is out of taste says the wine is flat.
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