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Obstinacy and contention are common qualities, most appearing in, and best becoming, a mean and illiterate soul.
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
Quality
Common
Obstinacy
Best
Contention
Soul
Illiterate
Mean
Appearing
Qualities
Becoming
More quotes by Michel de Montaigne
If my intentions were not to be read in my eyes and voice, I should not have survived so long without quarrels and without harm, seeing the indiscreet freedom with which I say, right or wrong, whatever comes into my head.
Michel de Montaigne
The common notions that we find in credit around us and infused into our souls by our fathers' seed, these seem to be the universal and natural ones. Whence it comes to pass that what is off the hinges of custom, people believe to be off the hinges of reason.
Michel de Montaigne
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
What kind of truth is it which has these mountains as its boundary and is a lie beyond them?
Michel de Montaigne
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
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
Each person calls barbarism whatever is not his or her own practice.... We may call Cannibals barbarians, in respect to the rulesof reason, but not in respect to ourselves, who surpass them in every kind of barbarity.
Michel de Montaigne
There is nothing so extreme that is not allowed by the custom of some nation or other.
Michel de Montaigne
A strong imagination begetteth opportunity.
Michel de Montaigne
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
After a tongue has once got the knack of lying, it is not to be imagined how impossible almost it is to reclaim it. Whence it comes to pass, that we see some men, who are otherwise very honest, so subject to this vice.
Michel de Montaigne
Amongst all other vices there is none I hate more than cruelty, both by nature and judgment, as the extremest of all vices.
Michel de Montaigne
There is a huge gulf between the man who follows the conventions and laws of his country and the man who sets out to regiment them and to change them.
Michel de Montaigne
There is some shadow of delight and delicacy which smiles upon and flatters us even in the very lap of melancholy.
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
Death pays all debts.
Michel de Montaigne
We must not attach knowledge to the mind, we have to incorporate it there.
Michel de Montaigne
Friendship is a creature formed for a companionship not for a herd.
Michel de Montaigne
In my opinion it is the happy living, and not, as Antisthenes said, the happy lying, in which human happiness consists.
Michel de Montaigne
When we have got it, we want something else.
Michel de Montaigne
