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Have you been able to think out and manage your own life? You have done the greatest task of all.... All other things, ruling, hoarding, building, are only little appendages and props, at most.
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
Done
Task
Things
Manage
Think
Tasks
Appendages
Thinking
Building
Hoarding
Life
Greatest
Props
Littles
Ruling
Able
Thoughtful
Little
Privacy
More quotes by Michel de Montaigne
But the touch or company of any man whatsoever stirreth up their heat, which in their solitude was hushed and quiet, and lay as cinders raked up in ashes.
Michel de Montaigne
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.
Michel de Montaigne
In my opinion it is the happy living, and not, as Antisthenes said, the happy lying, in which human happiness consists.
Michel de Montaigne
The virtue of the soul does not consist in flying high, but in walking orderly.
Michel de Montaigne
Eloquence is an engine invented to manage and wield at will the fierce democracy, and, like medicine to the sick, is only employed in the paroxysms of a disordered state.
Michel de Montaigne
Water, earth, air, fire, and the other parts of this structure of mine are no more instruments of your life than instruments of your death. Why do you fear your last day? It contributes no more to your death than each of the others. The last step does not cause the fatigue, but reveals it. All days travel toward death, the last one reaches it.
Michel de Montaigne
Since I would rather make of him an able man than a learned man, I would also urge that care be taken to choose a guide with a well-made rather than a well-filled head.
Michel de Montaigne
Words repeated again have as another sound, so another sense.
Michel de Montaigne
He whose mouth is out of taste says the wine is flat.
Michel de Montaigne
A hair shirt does not always render those chaste who wear it.
Michel de Montaigne
The memory represents to us not what we choose but what it pleases.
Michel de Montaigne
I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.
Michel de Montaigne
We call comeliness a mischance in the first respect, which belongs principally to the face.
Michel de Montaigne
I may indeed very well happen to contradict myself but truth, as Demades said, I do not contradict.
Michel de Montaigne
Take care that old age does not wrinkle your spirit even more than your face.
Michel de Montaigne
I go out of my way, but rather by license than carelessness.... It is the inattentive reader who loses my subject, not I. Some word about it will always be found off in a corner, which will not fail to be sufficient, though it takes little room.
Michel de Montaigne
I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie.
Michel de Montaigne
The truth of these days is not that which really is, but what every man persuades another man to believe.
Michel de Montaigne
I have never observed other effects of whipping than to render boys more cowardly, or more willfully obstinate.
Michel de Montaigne
If people must be talking about me, I would have it to be truthfully and justly. I would willingly return from the next world to contradict any person who described me other than I was, although he did it to honour me.
Michel de Montaigne
