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This idea is more surely understood by interrogation WHAT DO I KNOW? which I bear as my motto with the emblem of a pair of scales.
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
Idea
Pair
Ideas
Pairs
Scales
Surely
Bear
Emblem
Bears
Interrogation
Understood
Emblems
Knowledge
Motto
More quotes by Michel de Montaigne
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
How often our involuntary facial motions testify to the thoughts we were keeping secret, and betray us to those around!
Michel de Montaigne
Dreams are faithful interpreters of our inclinations but there is art required to sort and understand them.
Michel de Montaigne
For table-talk, I prefer the pleasant and witty before the learned and the grave in bed, beauty before goodness.
Michel de Montaigne
There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom.
Michel de Montaigne
What am I to choose? Choose what you please, as long as you choose. There you have a foolish answer, which seems to be the outcome, however, of all Dogmatism, which will not allow us to be ignorant of that which we are ignorant.
Michel de Montaigne
The human face is a weak guarantee yet it deserves some consideration. And if I had to whip the wicked, I would do so more severely to those who belied and betrayed the promises that nature had implanted on their brows I would punish malice more harshly when it was hidden under a kindly appearance.
Michel de Montaigne
A little of everything and nothing thoroughly, after the French fashion.
Michel de Montaigne
Thus we should beware of clinging to vulgar opinions, and judge things by reason's way, not by popular say.
Michel de Montaigne
The first lessons with which we should irrigate his mind should be those which teach him to know himself, and to know how to die ... and to live.
Michel de Montaigne
Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.
Michel de Montaigne
There is nothing so noble and so right as to play our human life well and fitly, nor anything so difficult to learn as how to livethis life well and according to Nature.
Michel de Montaigne
[Marriage] happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.
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
God defend me from myself.
Michel de Montaigne
A volunteer, you assign yourself specific roles and risks according to your judgement of their brilliance and importance, and you see when life itself may be justifiably devoted to them.
Michel de Montaigne
The pleasantest things in the world are pleasant thoughts, and the great art of life is to have as many of them as possible.
Michel de Montaigne
The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use some men have lived long, and lived little attend to it while you are in it. It lies in your will, not in the number of years, for you to have lived enough.
Michel de Montaigne
A man may be humble through vainglory.
Michel de Montaigne
And truly Philosophy is but sophisticated poetry. Whence do those ancient writers derive all their authority but from the poets?
Michel de Montaigne
