Quote

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

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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
Found
Diverse
Hard
Vain
Men
Diversity
Object
Constant
Undulating
Judgment
Marvelously
Truly
Uniform
Objects
Uniforms

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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There is a certain consideration, and a general duty of humanity, that binds us not only to the animals, which have life and feeling, but even to the trees and plants. We owe justice to people, and kindness and benevolence to all other creatures who may be susceptible of it. There is some intercourse between them and us, and some mutual obligation.
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Greatness of soul consists not so much in soaring high and in pressing forward, as in knowing how to adapt and limit oneself.
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There is perhaps no more obvious vanity than to write of it so vainly.
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The archer who overshoots his mark does no better than he who falls short of it.
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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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There are few men who dare to publish to the world the prayers they make to Almighty God.
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When Socrates, after being relieved of his irons, felt the relish of the itching that their weight had caused in his legs, he rejoiced to consider the close alliance between pain and pleasure.
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I quote others only in order the better to express myself.
Michel de Montaigne
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For among other things he had been counseled to bring me to love knowledge and duty by my own choice, without forcing my will, and to educate my soul entirely through gentleness and freedom.
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Oh, what a valiant faculty is hope.
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To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquillity in our conduct.
Michel de Montaigne
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It is the part of cowardice, not of courage, to go and crouch in a hole under a massive tomb, to avoid the blows of fortune.
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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The great and glorious masterpiece of men is to live to the point. All other things-to reign, to hoard, to build-are, at most, but inconsiderable props and appendages.
Michel de Montaigne
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The relish of good and evil depends in a great measure upon the opinion we have of them.
Michel de Montaigne
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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.
Michel de Montaigne
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I am much afraid that we shall have very greatly hastened the decline and ruin of the New World by our contagion, and that we willhave sold it our opinions and our arts very dear.
Michel de Montaigne
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Who does not in some sort live to others, does not live much to himself.
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If I were a maker of books I should compile a register, with comments, of different deaths. He who should teach people to die, would teach them to live.
Michel de Montaigne
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People of our time are so formed for agitation and ostentation that goodness, moderation, equability, constancy, and such quiet and obscure qualities are no longer felt.
Michel de Montaigne