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The pleasantest things in the world are pleasant thoughts, and the great art of life is to have as many of them as possible.

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
Possible
Happiness
Art
Many
Great
Pleasantest
Things
Pleasant
Life
Thoughts
World
Joy

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her.
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The only good histories are those written by those who had command in the events they describe.
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Intoxication is calculated to put heart into the elderly and give them delight in dancing.
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Those who make a practice of comparing human actions are never so perplexed as when they try to see them as a whole and in the same light for they commonly contradict each other so strangely that it seems impossible that they have come from the same shop.
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The confidence in another man's virtue is no light evidence of a man's own, and God willingly favors such a confidence.
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Nature has with a Motherly Tenderness observed this, that the Action she has enjoyned us for our Necessity should be also pleasant to us, and invites us to them, not only by Reason, but also by Appetite: and ’tis Injustice to infringe her Laws.
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If you have known how to compose your life, you have done a great deal more than the person who knows how to compose a book. You have done more than the one who has taken cities and empires.
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If people must be talking about me, I would have it to be truthfully and justly. I would willingly return from the next world to contradict any person who described me other than I was, although he did it to honour me.
Michel de Montaigne
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Ceremony forbids us to express by words things that are lawful and natural, and we obey it reason forbids us to do things unlawful and ill, and nobody obeys it.
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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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It is no hard matter to get children but after they are born, then begins the trouble, solicitude, and care rightly to train, principle, and bring them up.
Michel de Montaigne
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It is far more probable that our senses should deceive us, than that an old woman should be carried up a chimney on a broom stick and that it is far less astonishing that witnesses should lie, than that witches should perform the acts that were alleged.
Michel de Montaigne
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There is nothing so noble and so right as to play our human life well and fitly, nor anything so difficult to learn as how to livethis life well and according to Nature.
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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The most fruitful and natural exercise for our minds is, in my opinion, conversation.
Michel de Montaigne
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I cruelly hate cruelty, both by nature and reason, as the worst of all the vices. But then I am so soft in this that I cannot seea chicken's neck wrung without distress, and cannot bear to hear the squealing of a hare between the teeth of my hounds.
Michel de Montaigne
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We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.
Michel de Montaigne
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We are more unhappy to see people ahead of us than happy to see people behind us.
Michel de Montaigne
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Philosophical discussions habitually make men happy and joyful not frowning and sad.
Michel de Montaigne
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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.
Michel de Montaigne