Quote

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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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
Reflection
Nobody
Beguiled
Shall
Reflections
Hours
Reads
Reading
Profitable
Book
Wasted
Many
Idle
Time
Pleasant

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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It is not my deeds that I write down, it is myself, my essence.
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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.
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We have power over nothing except our will.
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Physicians have this advantage: the sun lights their success and the earth covers their failures.
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And obstinacy is the sister of constancy, at least in vigour and stability.
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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 may so seize on virtue, that if we embrace it with an overgreedy and violent desire, it may become vicious.
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Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.
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There is no greater enemy to those who would please than expectation.
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The memory represents to us not what we choose but what it pleases.
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A learned man is not learned in all things but a sufficient man is sufficient throughout, even to ignorance itself.
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Poetry reproduces an indefinable mood that is more amorous than love itself. Venus is not so beautiful all naked, alive, and panting, as she is here in Virgil.
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Judgement can do without knowledge: but not knowledge without judgement.
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It is a thorny undertaking, and more so than it seems, to follow a movement so wandering as that of our mind, to penetrate the opaque depths of its innermost folds, to pick out and immobilize the innumerable flutterings that agitate it.
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Amongst so many borrowed things, am glad if I can steal one, disguising and altering it for some new service.
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A man should ever, as much as in him lieth, be ready booted to take his journey, and above all things look he have then nothing to do but with himself.
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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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Seneca's virtue shows forth so live and vigorous in his writings, and the defense is so clear there against some of these imputations, as that of his wealth and excessive spending, that I would not believe any testimony to the contrary.
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Aesop, that great man, saw his master making water as he walked. What! he said, Must we void ourselves as we run? Use our timeas best we may, yet a great part of it will still be idly and ill spent.
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A wellborn mind that is practiced in dealing with people makes itself thoroughly agreeable by itself. Art is nothing else but thelist and record of the productions of such minds.
Michel de Montaigne