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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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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
Society
Accepted
Externals
Freedom
Forms
Fashions
Keep
Judging
Withdraw
Form
Follow
Freely
Power
Fashion
Wholly
Soul
Wise
Crowd
Things
Wisdom
Crowds
Men
Within
Judge

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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Whoever will imagine a perpetual confession of ignorance, a judgment without leaning or inclination, on any occasion whatever, hasa conception of Pyrrhonism.
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Who ever saw a doctor use the prescription of his colleague without cutting out or adding something?
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We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, so that what we believe we disbelieve, and cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn.
Michel de Montaigne
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A man must either imitate the vicious or hate them.
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In truth, the care and expense of our fathers aims only at furnishing our heads with knowledge of judgement and virtue, little news.
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And truly Philosophy is but sophisticated poetry. Whence do those ancient writers derive all their authority but from the poets?
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We seek and offer ourselves to be gulled.
Michel de Montaigne
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A foreign war is a lot milder than a civil war.
Michel de Montaigne
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Each person calls barbarism whatever is not his or her own practice.... We may call Cannibals barbarians, in respect to the rulesof reason, but not in respect to ourselves, who surpass them in every kind of barbarity.
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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.
Michel de Montaigne
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If love and ambition should be in equal balance, and come to jostle with equal force, I make no doubt but that the last would win the prize.
Michel de Montaigne
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A wise man loses nothing, if he but save himself.
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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There is no more expensive thing than a free gift.
Michel de Montaigne
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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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Words repeated again have as another sound, so another sense.
Michel de Montaigne
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It is an injustice that an old, broken, half-dead father should enjoy alone, in a corner of his hearth, possessions that would suffice for the advancement and maintenance of many children.
Michel de Montaigne
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Whatever I may be, I want to be elsewhere than on paper. My art and my industry have been employed in making myself good for something my studies, in teaching me to do, not to write. I have put all my efforts into forming my life. That is my trade and my work.
Michel de Montaigne
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True freedom is to have power over oneself for everything.
Michel de Montaigne
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In his commerce with men I mean him to include- and that principally- those who live only in the memory of books. By means of history he will frequent those great souls of former years. If you want it to be so, history can be a waste of time it can also be, if you want it to be so, a study bearing fruit beyond price.
Michel de Montaigne