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We are nearer neighbors to ourselves than the whiteness of snow or the weight of stones are to us: if man does not know himself, how should he know his functions and powers?

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
Doe
Functions
Men
Neighbors
Powers
Snow
Neighbor
Stones
Function
Whiteness
Weight
Nearer

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How often our involuntary facial motions testify to the thoughts we were keeping secret, and betray us to those around!
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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.
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Have you known how to take rest? You have done more than he who hath taken empires and cities.
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Plenty and indigence depend upon the opinion every one has of them and riches, like glory of health, have no more beauty or pleasure than their possessor is pleaded to lend them.
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An orator of past times declared that his calling was to make small things appear to be grand.
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In my opinion, every rich man is a miser.
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Ambition is not a vice of little people.
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In my opinion it is the happy living, and not, as Antisthenes said, the happy lying, in which human happiness consists.
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The good, supreme, divine poetry is above the rules and reason. Whoever discerns its beauty with a firm, sedate gaze does not see it, any more than he sees the splendor of a lightning flash. It does not persuade our judgement, it ravishes and overwhelms it.
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Wise people are foolish if they cannot adapt to foolish people.
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He whose mouth is out of taste says the wine is flat.
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We call comeliness a mischance in the first respect, which belongs principally to the face.
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Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.
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The first lessons with which we should irrigate his mind should be those which teach him to know himself, and to know how to die ... and to live.
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I see several animals that live so entire and perfect a life, some without sight, others without hearing: who knows whether to us also one, two, or three, or many other senses, may not be wanting?
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We find ourselves more taken with the running up and down, the games, and puerile simplicities of our children, than we do, afterward, with their most complete actions as if we had loved them for our sport, like monkeys, and not as men.
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To smell, though well, is to stink.
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The land of marriage has this peculiarity: that strangers are desirous of inhabiting it, while its natural inhabitants would willingly be banished from thence.
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There is nothing useless in nature not even uselessness itself
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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.
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