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We are more unhappy to see people ahead of us than happy to see people behind us.

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
Sad
Unhappy
Ahead
Sadness
Behinds
Behind
Happy

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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The oldest and best known evil was ever more supportable than one that was new and untried.
Michel de Montaigne
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True it is that she who escapeth safe and unpolluted from out the school of freedom, giveth more confidence of herself than she who comet sound out of the school of severity and restraint.
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Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.
Michel de Montaigne
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How often, being moved under a false cause, if the person offending makes a good defense and presents us with a just excuse, are we angry against truth and innocence itself?
Michel de Montaigne
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Aesop, that great man, saw his master making water as he walked. What! he said, Must we void ourselves as we run? Use our timeas best we may, yet a great part of it will still be idly and ill spent.
Michel de Montaigne
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A man must keep a little back shop where he can be himself without reserve. In solitude alone can he know true freedom.
Michel de Montaigne
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We trouble our life by thoughts about death, and our death by thoughts about life.
Michel de Montaigne
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Wise people are foolish if they cannot adapt to foolish people.
Michel de Montaigne
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The ceaseless labour of your life is to build the house of death.
Michel de Montaigne
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Diogenes was asked what wine he liked best and he answered as I would have done when he said, Somebody else's.
Michel de Montaigne
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Men of simple understanding, little inquisitive and little instructed, make good Christians.
Michel de Montaigne
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Since I would rather make of him an able man than a learned man, I would also urge that care be taken to choose a guide with a well-made rather than a well-filled head.
Michel de Montaigne
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Our skin is provided as adequately as theirs with endurance against the assaults of the weather: witness so many nations who have not yet tried the use of any clothes. Our ancient Gauls wore hardly any clothes nor do the Irish, our neighbors, under so cold a sky.
Michel de Montaigne
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The human face is a weak guarantee yet it deserves some consideration. And if I had to whip the wicked, I would do so more severely to those who belied and betrayed the promises that nature had implanted on their brows I would punish malice more harshly when it was hidden under a kindly appearance.
Michel de Montaigne
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For among other things he had been counseled to bring me to love knowledge and duty by my own choice, without forcing my will, and to educate my soul entirely through gentleness and freedom.
Michel de Montaigne
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In true friendship, in which I am expert, I give myself to my friend more than I draw him to me. I not only like doing him good better than having him do me good, but also would rather have him do good to himself than to me he does me most good when he does himself good.
Michel de Montaigne
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No man dies before his hour. The time you leave behind was no more yours, than that which was before your birth, and concerneth you no more.
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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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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We judge a horse not only by its pace on a racecourse, but also by its walk, nay, when resting in its stable.
Michel de Montaigne