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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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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
Live
Great
Life
Masterpiece
Glorious
Humanity
Purpose
Inspirational
More quotes by Michel de Montaigne
The worst of my actions or conditions seem not so ugly unto me as I find it both ugly and base not to dare to avouch for them.
Michel de Montaigne
Obsession is the wellspring of genius and madness.
Michel de Montaigne
Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves by railing at it and yet it is not absolutely railing against anything, to proclaim its defects, because they are in all things to be found, how beautiful or how much to be coveted soever.
Michel de Montaigne
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.
Michel de Montaigne
Every period of life has its peculiar prejudices whoever saw old age, that did not applaud the past, and condemn the present times?
Michel de Montaigne
A straight oar looks bent in the water. It matters not merely that we see a thing, but how we see it.
Michel de Montaigne
Is there anything so grave and serious as an ass?
Michel de Montaigne
The easy, gentle, and sloping path . . . is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road.
Michel de Montaigne
Repentance is no other than a recanting of the will, and opposition to our fancies, which lead us which way they please.
Michel de Montaigne
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.
Michel de Montaigne
Virtue can have naught to do with ease. . . . It craves a steep and thorny path.
Michel de Montaigne
To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquillity in our conduct.
Michel de Montaigne
We have so much ill fortune as inconstancy, or so much bad purpose as folly, we are not so full of evil as we are of inanity we are not so wretched as we are base
Michel de Montaigne
There is no more expensive thing than a free gift.
Michel de Montaigne
I have ever loved to repose myself, whether sitting or lying, with my heels as high or higher than my head.
Michel de Montaigne
As by some might be saide of me: that here I have but gathered a nosegay of strange floures, and have put nothing of mine unto it, but the thred to binde them. Certes, I have given unto publike opinion, that these borrowed ornaments accompany me but I meane not they should cover or hide me.
Michel de Montaigne
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
Off I go, rummaging about in books for sayings which please me.
Michel de Montaigne
Virtue cannot be followed but for herself, and if one sometimes borrows her mask to some other purpose, she presently pulls it away again.
Michel de Montaigne
The wise man should withdraw his soul within, out of the crowd, and keep it in freedom and power to judge things freely but as for externals, he should wholly follow the accepted fashions and forms.
Michel de Montaigne
