Quote

The knowledge of courtesy and good manners is a very necessary study. It is like grace and beauty, that which begets liking and an inclination to love one another at the first sight.

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
Knowledge
Courtesy
Another
Inclination
Firsts
Manners
First
Sight
Good
Necessary
Love
Grace
Like
Study
Liking
Beauty
Begets

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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And not to serve for a table-talk.
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We feel a kind of bittersweet pricking of malicious delight in contemplating the misfortunes of others.
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Who does not in some sort live to others, does not live much to himself.
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Children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.
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The corruption of the age is made up by the particular contribution of every individual man some contribute treachery, others injustice, atheism, tyranny, avarice, cruelty, according to their power.
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In my opinion, every rich man is a miser.
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To say less of yourself than is true is stupidity, not modesty. To pay yourself less than you are worth is cowardice and pusillanimity.
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Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.
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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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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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It is not necessity but abundance which produces greed.
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Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages.
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It is for little souls, that truckle under the weight of affairs, not to know how clearly to disengage themselves, and not to know how to lay them aside and take them up again.
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I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics.
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After they had accustomed themselves at Rome to the spectacles of the slaughter of animals, they proceeded to those of the slaughter of men, to the gladiators.
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I seek in the reading of books, only to please myself, by an honest diversion.
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It takes so much to be a king that he exists only as such. That extraneous glare that surrounds him hides him and conceals him from us our sight breaks and is dissipated by it being filled and arrested by this strong light.
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To speak less of oneself than what one really is, is folly, not modesty and to take that for current pay which is under a man's value, is pusillanimity and cowardice.
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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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Examples teach us that in military affairs, and all others of a like nature, study is apt to enervate and relax the courage of man, rather than to give strength and energy to the mind.
Michel de Montaigne