Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Person
Angry
Good
Moved
Offending
Cause
Presents
Causes
Innocence
Often
False
Makes
Excuse
Truth
Defense
Persons
Anger

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

Image
Judgement holds in me a magisterial seat, at least it carefully tries to. It lets my feelings go their way, both hatred and friendship, even the friendship I bear myself, without being changed and corrupted by them.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
Any time and any place can be used to study: his room, a garden, is table, his bed when alone or in company morning and evening. His chief study will be Philosophy, that Former of good judgement and character who is privileged to be concerned with everything.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
If love and ambition should be in equal balance, and come to jostle with equal force, I make no doubt but that the last would win the prize.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
It is easier to write an indifferent poem than to understand a good one.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
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
Image
There is no greater enemy to those who would please than expectation.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
There never were, in the world, two opinions alike, no more than two hairs, or two grains the most universal quality is diversity.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
Courtesy is a science of the highest importance. It is...opening a door that we may derive instruction from the example of others, and at the same time enabling us to benefit them by our example, if there be anything in our character worthy of imitation.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
We seem ambitious God's whole work to undo. ...With new diseases on ourselves we war, And with new physic, a worse engine far.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
I agree that we should work and prolong the functions of life as far as we can, and hope that Death may find me planting my cabbages, but indifferent to him and still more to the unfinished state of my garden.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
To understand via the heart is not to understand.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
As by some might be saide of me: that here I have but gathered a nosegay of strange floures, and have put nothing of mine unto it, but the thred to binde them. Certes, I have given unto publike opinion, that these borrowed ornaments accompany me but I meane not they should cover or hide me.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
I quote others only in order the better to express myself.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
Rash and incessant scolding runs into custom and renders itself despised.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
No wonder, said an Ancient, that chance has so much power over us, since it is by chance that we live.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
So it is with minds. Unless you keep them busy with some definite subject that will bridle and control them, they throw themselves in disorder hither and yon in the vague field of imagination... And there is no mad or idle fancy that they do not bring forth in the agitation.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
Things are not bad in themselves, but our cowardice makes them so.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
Whoever will imagine a perpetual confession of ignorance, a judgment without leaning or inclination, on any occasion whatever, hasa conception of Pyrrhonism.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
Age imprints more wrinkles a in the mind, than it does in the face, and souls are never, or very rarely seen, that in growing old do not smell sour and musty. Man moves all together, both towards his perfection and decay.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
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.
Michel de Montaigne