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Not being able to govern events, I govern myself, and apply myself to them if they will not apply themselves to 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
Events
Able
Govern
Apply
Temptation
Expectations

More quotes by 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.
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It is commonly seene by experience, that excellent memories do rather accompany weake judgements.
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Human wisdom makes as ill use of her talent when she exercises it in rescinding from the number and sweetness of those pleasures that are naturally our due, as she employs it favorably and well in artificially disguising and tricking out the ills of life to alleviate the sense of them.
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The perpetual work of your life is but to lay the foundation of death.
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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
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I have never observed other effects of whipping than to render boys more cowardly, or more willfully obstinate.
Michel de Montaigne
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For a desperate disease a desperate cure.
Michel de Montaigne
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The reverse side of truth has a hundred thousand shapes and no defined limits.
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.
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In truth, the care and expense of our fathers aims only at furnishing our heads with knowledge of judgement and virtue, little news.
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The curiosity of knowing things has been given to man for a scourge.
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Not because Socrates said so, but because it is in truth my own disposition — and perchance to some excess — I look upon all men as my compatriots, and embrace a Pole as a Frenchman, making less account of the national than of the universal and common bond.
Michel de Montaigne
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To know much is often the cause of doubting more.
Michel de Montaigne
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The same reason that makes us chide and brawl and fall out with any of our neighbors, causeth a war to follow between Princes.
Michel de Montaigne
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Saying is one thing and doing is another
Michel de Montaigne
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Valor is strength, not of legs and arms, but of heart and soul it consists not in the worth of our horse or our weapons, but in our own.
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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Don't be afraid to say what you are not afraid to think
Michel de Montaigne
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Scratching is one of nature's sweetest gratifications, and nearest at hand.
Michel de Montaigne
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I am much afraid that we shall have very greatly hastened the decline and ruin of the New World by our contagion, and that we willhave sold it our opinions and our arts very dear.
Michel de Montaigne