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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

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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
Beautiful
Attain
Cannot
Unto
Anything
Revenge
Much
Critics
Soever
Things
Criticism
Railing
Absolutely
Coveted
Since
Proclaim
Found
Defects

More quotes by 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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To honor him whom we have made is far from honoring him that hath made us.
Michel de Montaigne
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In plain truth, lying is an accursed vice. We are not men, nor have any other tie upon another, but by our word.
Michel de Montaigne
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When I am attached by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books. They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.
Michel de Montaigne
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Friendship that possesses the whole soul, and there rules and sways with an absolute sovereignty, can admit of no rival.
Michel de Montaigne
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Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.
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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How many valiant men we have seen to survive their own reputation!
Michel de Montaigne
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We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, so that what we believe we disbelieve, and cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn.
Michel de Montaigne
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People of our time are so formed for agitation and ostentation that goodness, moderation, equability, constancy, and such quiet and obscure qualities are no longer felt.
Michel de Montaigne
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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
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Nature clasps all her creatures in a universal embrace there is not one of them which she has not plainly furnished with all means necessary to the conservation of its being.
Michel de Montaigne
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Every day I hear stupid people say things that are not stupid.
Michel de Montaigne
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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?
Michel de Montaigne
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The world is but a perennial movement. All things in it are in constant motion-the earth, the rocks of the Caucasus, the pyramids of Egypt-both with the common motion and with their own.
Michel de Montaigne
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Almost all the opinions we have are taken on authority and on credit.
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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Water, earth, air, fire, and the other parts of this structure of mine are no more instruments of your life than instruments of your death. Why do you fear your last day? It contributes no more to your death than each of the others. The last step does not cause the fatigue, but reveals it. All days travel toward death, the last one reaches it.
Michel de Montaigne
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I am myself the matter of my book.
Michel de Montaigne
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Obstinacy and heat in argument are surest proofs of folly. Is there anything so stubborn, obstinate, disdainful, contemplative, grave, or serious, as an ass?
Michel de Montaigne