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To say less of yourself than is true is stupidity, not modesty. To pay yourself less than you are worth is cowardice and pusillanimity.

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
Self
Cowardice
Modesty
Stupidity
Pay
Worth
Less
True

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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The middle sort of historians (of which the most part are) spoil all they will chew our meat for us.
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Dreams are faithful interpreters of our inclinations but there is art required to sort and understand them.
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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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When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her.
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Speaking is half his that speaks, and half his that hears.
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Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, inquiry the progress, ignorance the end.
Michel de Montaigne
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All the opinions in the world point out that pleasure is our aim.
Michel de Montaigne
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Nothing else but an insatiate thirst of enjoying a greedily desired object.
Michel de Montaigne
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Death pays all debts.
Michel de Montaigne
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The common notions that we find in credit around us and infused into our souls by our fathers' seed, these seem to be the universal and natural ones. Whence it comes to pass that what is off the hinges of custom, people believe to be off the hinges of reason.
Michel de Montaigne
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... whoever believes anything esteems that it is a work of charity to persuade another of it.
Michel de Montaigne
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We find ourselves more taken with the running up and down, the games, and puerile simplicities of our children, than we do, afterward, with their most complete actions as if we had loved them for our sport, like monkeys, and not as men.
Michel de Montaigne
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The virtue of the soul does not consist in flying high, but in walking orderly.
Michel de Montaigne
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Fortune does us neither good nor hurt she only presents us the matter, and the seed, which our soul, more powerfully than she, turns and applies as she best pleases being the sole cause and sovereign mistress of her own happy or unhappy condition.
Michel de Montaigne
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It is an absolute perfection and virtually divine to know how to enjoy our being rightfully.
Michel de Montaigne
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There is as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and others.
Michel de Montaigne
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The land of marriage has this peculiarity: that strangers are desirous of inhabiting it, while its natural inhabitants would willingly be banished from thence.
Michel de Montaigne
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It's not victory if it doesn't end the war.
Michel de Montaigne
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Other people do not see you at all, but guess at you by uncertain conjectures.
Michel de Montaigne
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Not because Socrates said so, but because it is in truth my own disposition — and perchance to some excess — I look upon all men as my compatriots, and embrace a Pole as a Frenchman, making less account of the national than of the universal and common bond.
Michel de Montaigne