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Cowardice is the mother of cruelty.
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
Cowardice
Cruelty
Mother
More quotes by Michel de Montaigne
Socrates thought and so do I that the wisest theory about the gods is no theory at all.
Michel de Montaigne
Whatever I may be, I want to be elsewhere than on paper. My art and my industry have been employed in making myself good for something my studies, in teaching me to do, not to write. I have put all my efforts into forming my life. That is my trade and my work.
Michel de Montaigne
A man must always study, but he must not always go to school: what a contemptible thing is an old abecedarian!
Michel de Montaigne
We hold death, poverty, and grief for our principal enemies but this death, which some repute the most dreadful of all dreadful things, who does not know that others call it the only secure harbor from the storm and tempests of life, the sovereign good of nature, the sole support of liberty, and the common and sudden remedy of all evils?
Michel de Montaigne
We are born to inquire after truth it belongs to a greater power to possess it. It is not, as Democritus said, hid in the bottom of the deeps, but rather elevated to an infinite height in the divine knowledge.
Michel de Montaigne
We are all of us richer than we think we are.
Michel de Montaigne
There is a certain amount of purpose, acquiescence, and satisfaction in nursing one's melancholy.
Michel de Montaigne
Ambition sufficiently plagues her proselytes, by keeping themselves always in show, like the statue of a public place.
Michel de Montaigne
Great authors, when they write about causes, adduce not only those they think are true but also those they do not believe in, provided they have some originality and beauty. They speak truly and usefully enough if they speak ingeniously.
Michel de Montaigne
If faces were not alike, we could not distinguish men from beasts if they were not different, we could not tell one man from another.
Michel de Montaigne
There is perhaps no more obvious vanity than to write of it so vainly.
Michel de Montaigne
He that I am reading seems always to have the most force.
Michel de Montaigne
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
Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.
Michel de Montaigne
When I quote others I do so in order to express my own ideas more clearly.
Michel de Montaigne
And I loathe people who find it harder to put up with a gown askew than with a soul askew and who judge a man by his bow, his bearing and his boots.
Michel de Montaigne
All we do is to look after the opinions and learning of others: we ought to make them our own.
Michel de Montaigne
Let us permit nature to have her way. She understands her business better than we do.
Michel de Montaigne
The soul which has no fixed purpose in life is lost to be everywhere, is to be nowhere.
Michel de Montaigne
Whatever can be done another day can be done today.
Michel de Montaigne
