Quote

Virtue cannot be followed but for herself, and if one sometimes borrows her mask to some other purpose, she presently pulls it away again.

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
Followed
Mask
Virtue
Purpose
Away
Cannot
Borrows
Sometimes
Presently
Pulls

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

Image
Whatever can be done another day can be done today.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
To honor him whom we have made is far from honoring him that hath made us.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
If I were of the trade, I should naturalize art as much as they artialize nature.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
I find no quality so easy for a man to counterfeit as devotion, though his life and manner are not conformable to it the essence of it is abstruse and occult, but the appearances easy and showy.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
How many valiant men we have seen to survive their own reputation!
Michel de Montaigne
Image
A wise man loses nothing, if he but save himself.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
The height and value of true virtue consists in the facility, utility, and pleasure of its exercise so far from difficulty, that boys, as well as men, and the innocent as well as the subtle, may make it their own and it is by order and good conduct, and not by force, that it is to be acquired.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
I have seen people rude by being over-polite.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
For a desperate disease a desperate cure.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
We should be similarly wary of accepting common opinions we should judge them by the ways of reason not by popular vote.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
In my opinion, every rich man is a miser.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
The worthiest man to be known, and for a pattern to be presented to the world, he is the man of whom we have most certain knowledge. He hath been declared and enlightened by the most clear-seeing men that ever were the testimonies we have of him are in faithfulness and sufficiency most admirable.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
How many quarrels, and how important, has the doubt as to the meaning of this syllable Hoc produced for the world!
Michel de Montaigne
Image
And truly Philosophy is but sophisticated poetry. Whence do those ancient writers derive all their authority but from the poets?
Michel de Montaigne
Image
Every movement reveals us.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
It is easier to write an indifferent poem than to understand a good one.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
The middle sort of historians (of which the most part are) spoil all they will chew our meat for us.
Michel de Montaigne