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If my mind could gain a firm footing, I would not make essays, I would make decisions but it is always in apprenticeship and on trial.

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
Trials
Always
Firm
Would
Gain
Gains
Decisions
Footing
Apprenticeship
Decision
Essays
Mind
Trial
Make

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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The body enjoys a great share in our being, and has an eminent place in it. Its structure and composition, therefore, are worthy of proper consideration.
Michel de Montaigne
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Men are most apt to believe what they least understand.
Michel de Montaigne
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Beauty is the true prerogative of women, and so peculiarly their own, that our sex, though naturally requiring another sort of feature, is never in its lustre but when puerile and beardless, confused and mixed with theirs.
Michel de Montaigne
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If I were of the trade, I should naturalize art as much as they artialize nature.
Michel de Montaigne
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Now, since everything else is furnished with the exact amount of needle and thread required to maintain its being, it is in truth incredible that we alone should be brought into the world in a defective and indigent state, in a state such that we cannot maintain ourselves without external aid.
Michel de Montaigne
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God is favorable to those whom he makes to die by degrees 'tis the only benefit of old age. The last death will be so much the less painful: it will kill but a quarter of a man or but half a one at most.
Michel de Montaigne
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It should be noted that children at play are not playing about their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity.
Michel de Montaigne
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Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages.
Michel de Montaigne
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People of our time are so formed for agitation and ostentation that goodness, moderation, equability, constancy, and such quiet and obscure qualities are no longer felt.
Michel de Montaigne
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It is far more probable that our senses should deceive us, than that an old woman should be carried up a chimney on a broom stick and that it is far less astonishing that witnesses should lie, than that witches should perform the acts that were alleged.
Michel de Montaigne
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No pleasure is fully delightful without communications, and no delight absolute except imparted.
Michel de Montaigne
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And if nobody reads me, shall I have wasted my time, when I have beguiled so many idle hours with such pleasant and profitable reflections?
Michel de Montaigne
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Man is quite insane. He wouldn?t know how to create a maggot, and he creates Gods by the dozen.
Michel de Montaigne
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All opinions in the world agree in this, that pleasure is our end, although they differ as to the means of attaining it.
Michel de Montaigne
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He who does not live in some degree for others, hardly lives for himself.
Michel de Montaigne
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The wise man should withdraw his soul within, out of the crowd, and keep it in freedom and power to judge things freely but as for externals, he should wholly follow the accepted fashions and forms.
Michel de Montaigne
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It costs an unreasonable woman no more to pass over one reason than another they cherish themselves most where they are most wrong.
Michel de Montaigne
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To behave rightly, we ourselves should never lay a hand on our servants as long as our anger lasts. Things will seem different to us when we have quieted and cooled down.
Michel de Montaigne
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The share we have in the knowledge of truth, such as it is, has not been acquired by our own powers. God has taught ushis wonderful secrets our faith is not of our acquiring, it is purely the gift of another's bounty.
Michel de Montaigne
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Marriage can be compared to a cage: birds outside it despair to enter, and birds within, to escape.
Michel de Montaigne