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Nature has, herself, I fear, imprinted in man a kind of instinct to inhumanity.
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
Inhumanity
Cruelty
Instinct
Fear
Nature
Kind
Men
Imprinted
More quotes by Michel de Montaigne
Knowledge is an excellent drug but no drug has virtue enough to preserve itself from corruption and decay, if the vessel be tainted and impure wherein it is put to keep.
Michel de Montaigne
Order a purge for your brain, it will there be much better employed than upon your stomach.
Michel de Montaigne
Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own.
Michel de Montaigne
To speak less of oneself than what one really is, is folly, not modesty and to take that for current pay which is under a man's value, is pusillanimity and cowardice.
Michel de Montaigne
Why dost thou complain of this world? It detains thee not thy own cowardice is the cause, if thou livest in pain.
Michel de Montaigne
In his commerce with men I mean him to include- and that principally- those who live only in the memory of books. By means of history he will frequent those great souls of former years. If you want it to be so, history can be a waste of time it can also be, if you want it to be so, a study bearing fruit beyond price.
Michel de Montaigne
Habit is a second nature.
Michel de Montaigne
Examples teach us that in military affairs, and all others of a like nature, study is apt to enervate and relax the courage of man, rather than to give strength and energy to the mind.
Michel de Montaigne
Nothing else but an insatiate thirst of enjoying a greedily desired object.
Michel de Montaigne
The shortest way to arrive at glory should be to do that for conscience which we do for glory. And the virtue of Alexander appears to me with much less vigor in his theater than that of Socrates in his mean and obscure. I can easily conceive Socrates in the place of Alexander, but Alexander in that of Socrates I cannot.
Michel de Montaigne
Arts and sciences are not cast in a mould, but are found and perfected by degrees, by often handling and polishing.
Michel de Montaigne
For there is no air that men so greedily draw in, that diffuses itself so soon, and that penetrates so deep as that of license.
Michel de Montaigne
Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages.
Michel de Montaigne
And if nobody reads me, shall I have wasted my time, when I have beguiled so many idle hours with such pleasant and profitable reflections?
Michel de Montaigne
This idea is more surely understood by interrogation WHAT DO I KNOW? which I bear as my motto with the emblem of a pair of scales.
Michel de Montaigne
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
There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.
Michel de Montaigne
There is no so wretched and coarse a soul wherein some particular faculty is not seen to shine.
Michel de Montaigne
Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.
Michel de Montaigne
Teach him a certain refinement in sorting out and selecting his arguments, with an affection for relevance and so for brevity. Above all let him be taught to throw down his arms and surrender to truth as soon as he perceives it, whether the truth is born at his rival's doing or within himself from some change in his ideas.
Michel de Montaigne
