Quote

He that had never seen a river imagined the first he met to be the sea and the greatest things that have fallen within our knowledge we conclude the extremes that nature makes of the kind.

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
Makes
Fallen
Nature
Rivers
Firsts
Mets
First
Sea
Kind
Greatest
Conclude
Things
Seen
Imagined
Never
Within
River
Knowledge
Extremes

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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I have seen people rude by being over-polite.
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We are all of us richer than we think we are but we are taught to borrow and to beg, and brought up more to make use of what is another's than of our own.
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A man should ever, as much as in him lieth, be ready booted to take his journey, and above all things look he have then nothing to do but with himself.
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We took advantage of [the Indians'] ignorance and inexperience to incline them the more easily toward treachery, lewdness, avarice, and every sort of inhumanity and cruelty, after the example and pattern of our ways.
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The first distinction among men, and the first consideration that gave one precedence over another, was doubtless the advantage of beauty.
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If not for that of conscience, yet at least for ambition's sake, let us reject ambition, let us disdain that thirst of honor and renown, so low and mendicant that it makes us beg it of all sorts of people.
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Oh, what a valiant faculty is hope, that in a mortal subject, and in a moment, makes nothing of usurping infinity, immensity, eternity, and of supplying its masters indigence, at its pleasure, with all things he can imagine or desire!
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Truly man is a marvelously vain, diverse, and undulating object. It is hard to found any constant and uniform judgment on him.
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It is only reasonable to allow the administration of affairs to mothers before their children reach the age prescribed by law at which they themselves can be responsible. But that father would have reared them ill who could not hope that in their maturity they would have more wisdom and competence than his wife.
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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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It is not my deeds that I write down, it is myself, my essence.
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Men ... are not agreed about any one thing, not even that heaven is over our heads.
Michel de Montaigne
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The daughter-in-law of Pythagoras said that a woman who goes to bed with a man ought to lay aside her modesty with her skirt, and put it on again with her petticoat
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Diogenes was asked what wine he liked best and he answered as I would have done when he said, Somebody else's.
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It is for little souls, that truckle under the weight of affairs, not to know how clearly to disengage themselves, and not to know how to lay them aside and take them up again.
Michel de Montaigne
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If I am to serve as an instrument of deceit, at least let it be with a clear conscience. I do not want to be considered either so affectionate or so loyal a servant as to be found fit to betray anyone.
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The thing I fear most is fear.
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Authors communicate with the people by some special extrinsic mark I am the first to do so by my entire being, as Michel de Montaigne.
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If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not even think of themselves.
Michel de Montaigne
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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.
Michel de Montaigne