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Off I go, rummaging about in books for sayings which please me.

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
Rummaging
Sayings
Please
Books
Book

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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I see several animals that live so entire and perfect a life, some without sight, others without hearing: who knows whether to us also one, two, or three, or many other senses, may not be wanting?
Michel de Montaigne
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Man is quite insane. He wouldn?t know how to create a maggot, and he creates Gods by the dozen.
Michel de Montaigne
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I am disgusted with innovation, in whatever guise, and with reason, for I have seen very harmful effects of it.
Michel de Montaigne
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Fortune does us neither good nor hurt she only presents us the matter, and the seed, which our soul, more powerfully than she, turns and applies as she best pleases being the sole cause and sovereign mistress of her own happy or unhappy condition.
Michel de Montaigne
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It is far more probable that our senses should deceive us, than that an old woman should be carried up a chimney on a broom stick and that it is far less astonishing that witnesses should lie, than that witches should perform the acts that were alleged.
Michel de Montaigne
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I honor most those to whom I show least honor and where my soul moves with great alacrity, I forget the proper steps of ceremony.
Michel de Montaigne
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Princes give mee sufficiently, if they take nothing from me, and doe me much good, if they doe me no hurt: it is all I require of them.
Michel de Montaigne
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Dreams are faithful interpreters of our inclinations but there is art required to sort and understand them.
Michel de Montaigne
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One man may have some special knowledge at first-hand about the character of a river or a spring, who otherwise knows only what everyone else knows. Yet to give currency to this shred of information, he will undertake to write on the whole science of physics. From this fault many great troubles spring.
Michel de Montaigne
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I must use these great men's virtues as a cloak for my weakness.
Michel de Montaigne
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Make use of life while you have it. Whether you have lived enough depends upon yourself, not on the number of your years.
Michel de Montaigne
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We have no participation in Being, because all human nature is ever midway between being born and dying, giving off only a vague image and shadow of itself, and a weak and uncertain opinion. And if you chance to fix your thoughts on trying to grasp its essence, it would be neither more nor less than if your tried to clutch water.
Michel de Montaigne
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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.
Michel de Montaigne
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Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately.
Michel de Montaigne
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We cannot fail in following nature.
Michel de Montaigne
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Ceremony forbids us to express by words things that are lawful and natural, and we obey it reason forbids us to do things unlawful and ill, and nobody obeys it.
Michel de Montaigne
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To smell, though well, is to stink.
Michel de Montaigne
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Those who make a practice of comparing human actions are never so perplexed as when they try to see them as a whole and in the same light for they commonly contradict each other so strangely that it seems impossible that they have come from the same shop.
Michel de Montaigne
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A man must not always tell all, for that be folly but what a man says should be what he thinks.
Michel de Montaigne
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There is, nevertheless, a certain respect and a general duty of humanity that ties us, not only to beasts that have life and sense, but even to trees and plants.
Michel de Montaigne