Quote

My errors are by now natural and incorrigible but the good that worthy men do the public by making themselves imitable, I shall perhaps do by making myself evitable.

Michel de Montaigne

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Making
Incorrigible
Good
Imitation
Men
Errors
Worthy
Perhaps
Shall
Public
Natural

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

Image
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
Image
There is, nevertheless, a certain respect and a general duty of humanity that ties us, not only to beasts that have life and sense, but even to trees and plants.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not even think of themselves.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
A man has need of tough ears to hear himself fairly judged.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
The most useful and honorable science and occupation for a woman is the science of housekeeping. I know some that are miserly, very few that are good managers.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
No doctor takes pleasure in the health even of his friends.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
There is as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and others.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
I find no quality so easy for a man to counterfeit as devotion, though his life and manner are not conformable to it the essence of it is abstruse and occult, but the appearances easy and showy.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
After a tongue has once got the knack of lying, it is not to be imagined how impossible almost it is to reclaim it. Whence it comes to pass, that we see some men, who are otherwise very honest, so subject to this vice.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
Any person of honor chooses rather to lose his honor than to lose his conscience.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
One man may have some special knowledge at first-hand about the character of a river or a spring, who otherwise knows only what everyone else knows. Yet to give currency to this shred of information, he will undertake to write on the whole science of physics. From this fault many great troubles spring.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
In nine lifetimes, you'll never know as much about your cat as your cat knows about you.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
If I were of the trade, I should naturalize art as much as they artialize nature.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
Truly man is a marvelously vain, diverse, and undulating object. It is hard to found any constant and uniform judgment on him.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
Princes give mee sufficiently, if they take nothing from me, and doe me much good, if they doe me no hurt: it is all I require of them.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
Glory consists of two parts: the one in setting too great a value upon ourselves, and the other in setting too little a value upon others.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
I put forward formless and unresolved notions, as do those who publish doubtful questions to debate in the schools, not to establish the truth but to seek it.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
A young man ought to cross his own rules, to awake his vigor, and to keep it from growing faint and rusty. And there is no course of life so weak and sottish as that which is carried on by rule and discipline.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
If I speak of myself in different ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
I admire the assurance and confidence everyone has in himself, whereas there is hardly anything I am sure I know or that I dare give my word I can do.
Michel de Montaigne