Quote

If others examined themselves attentively, as I do, they would find themselves, as I do, full of inanity and nonsense. Get rid of it I cannot without getting rid of myself.

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
Others
Cannot
Find
Inanity
Without
Attentively
Would
Examined
Nonsense
Full
Getting

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The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mould
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There is no desire more natural than the desire of knowledge. (Il n'est desir plus naturel que le desir de connaissance)
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We judge a horse not only by its pace on a racecourse, but also by its walk, nay, when resting in its stable.
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Is it reasonable that even the arts should take advantage of and profit by our natural stupidity and feebleness of mind?
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The worth of the mind consisteth not in going high, but in marching orderly.
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Lay a beam between these two towers of such width as we need to walk on: there is no philosophical wisdom of such great firmness that it can give us courage to walk on it as we should if it were on the ground.
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One should always have one's boots on and be ready to leave.
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Arts and sciences are not cast in a mould, but are found and perfected by degrees, by often handling and polishing.
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No man divulges his revenue, or at least which way it comes in: but every one publishes his acquisitions.
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I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided if greater pains be the consequence, and pains to be coveted that will terminate in greater pleasures.
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Marriage, a market which has nothing free but the entrance.
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I speak the truth, not my fill of it, but as much as I dare speak and I dare to do so a little more as I grow old.
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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.
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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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Off I go, rummaging about in books for sayings which please me.
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How often our involuntary facial motions testify to the thoughts we were keeping secret, and betray us to those around!
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If I were of the trade, I should naturalize art as much as they artialize nature.
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It is easier to write an indifferent poem than to understand a good one.
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Example is a bright looking-glass, universal and for all shapes to look into.
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To make a crooked stick straight, we bend it the contrary way.
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