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Obstinacy and heat in argument are surest proofs of folly. Is there anything so stubborn, obstinate, disdainful, contemplative, grave, or serious, as an ass?

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
Argument
Surest
Serious
Stubborn
Anything
Ass
Grave
Disdainful
Graves
Obstinacy
Folly
Proofs
Heat
Obstinate
Proof
Contemplative

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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When I am attached by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books. They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.
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It is a thorny undertaking, and more so than it seems, to follow a movement so wandering as that of our mind, to penetrate the opaque depths of its innermost folds, to pick out and immobilize the innumerable flutterings that agitate it.
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This notion [skepticism] is more clearly understood by asking What do I know?
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We hold death, poverty, and grief for our principal enemies but this death, which some repute the most dreadful of all dreadful things, who does not know that others call it the only secure harbor from the storm and tempests of life, the sovereign good of nature, the sole support of liberty, and the common and sudden remedy of all evils?
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In the education of children there is nothing like alluring the interest and affection otherwise you only make so many asses laden with books.
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I have gathered a posy of other men’s flowers and only the thread that bonds them is my own.
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There is a certain consideration, and a general duty of humanity, that binds us not only to the animals, which have life and feeling, but even to the trees and plants. We owe justice to people, and kindness and benevolence to all other creatures who may be susceptible of it. There is some intercourse between them and us, and some mutual obligation.
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I am myself the matter of my book.
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Death pays all debts.
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It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness.
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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
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Take care that old age does not wrinkle your spirit even more than your face.
Michel de Montaigne
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There is a plague on Man, the opinion that he knows something.
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Dreams are faithful interpreters of our inclinations but there is art required to sort and understand them.
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I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.
Michel de Montaigne
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Shame on all eloquence which leaves us with a taste for itself and not for its substance.
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There is perhaps no more obvious vanity than to write of it so vainly.
Michel de Montaigne
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If you don't know how to die, don't worry Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you don't bother your head about it.
Michel de Montaigne
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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.
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I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.
Michel de Montaigne