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And to bring in a new word by the head and shoulders, they leave out the old one.

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
Shoulders
Leave
Bring
Head
Word

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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Ambition is, of all other, the most contrary humor to solitude and glory and repose are so inconsistent that they cannot possibly inhabit one and the same place and for so much as I understand, those have only their arms and legs disengaged from the crowd, their mind and intention remain engaged behind more than ever.
Michel de Montaigne
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For table-talk, I prefer the pleasant and witty before the learned and the grave in bed, beauty before goodness.
Michel de Montaigne
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For among other things he had been counseled to bring me to love knowledge and duty by my own choice, without forcing my will, and to educate my soul entirely through gentleness and freedom.
Michel de Montaigne
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Nothing prints more lively in our minds than something we wish to forget.
Michel de Montaigne
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Confidence in the goodness of another is good proof of one's own goodness.
Michel de Montaigne
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This notion [skepticism] is more clearly understood by asking What do I know?
Michel de Montaigne
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Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.
Michel de Montaigne
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There is nothing which so poisons princes as flattery, nor anything whereby wicked men more easily obtain credit and favor with them.
Michel de Montaigne
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Socrates and then Archesilaus used to make their pupils speak first they spoke afterwards. 'Obest plerumque iss discere volunt authoritas eorum qui docent.' [For those who want to learn, the obstacle can often be the authority of those who teach]
Michel de Montaigne
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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.
Michel de Montaigne
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True it is that she who escapeth safe and unpolluted from out the school of freedom, giveth more confidence of herself than she who comet sound out of the school of severity and restraint.
Michel de Montaigne
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To divert myself from a troublesome fancy, it is but to run to my books they presently fix me to them, and drive the other out of my thoughts, and do not mutiny to see that I have only recourse to them for want of other more, real, natural, and lively conveniences they always receive me with the same kindness.
Michel de Montaigne
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I consider it equal injustice to set our heart against natural pleasures and to set our heart too much on them. We should neither pursue them, nor flee them we should accept them.
Michel de Montaigne
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Human wisdom makes as ill use of her talent when she exercises it in rescinding from the number and sweetness of those pleasures that are naturally our due, as she employs it favorably and well in artificially disguising and tricking out the ills of life to alleviate the sense of them.
Michel de Montaigne
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There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.
Michel de Montaigne
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Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head.
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 nothing so extreme that is not allowed by the custom of some nation or other.
Michel de Montaigne
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Things seem greater by imagination than they are in effect.
Michel de Montaigne
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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