Quote

We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.

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
Dies
Unlearned
Freedom
Awaits
Death
Everywhere
Men
Slave
Wait
Learned
Practice
Waiting

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

Image
In true friendship, in which I am expert, I give myself to my friend more than I draw him to me. I not only like doing him good better than having him do me good, but also would rather have him do good to himself than to me he does me most good when he does himself good.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
Courtesy is a science of the highest importance. It is...opening a door that we may derive instruction from the example of others, and at the same time enabling us to benefit them by our example, if there be anything in our character worthy of imitation.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
He that first likened glory to a shadow did better than he was aware of. They are both of them things excellently vain. Glory also, like a shadow, goes sometimes before the body, and sometimes in length infinitely exceeds it.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
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
Image
If not for that of conscience, yet at least for ambition's sake, let us reject ambition, let us disdain that thirst of honor and renown, so low and mendicant that it makes us beg it of all sorts of people.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
If people must be talking about me, I would have it to be truthfully and justly. I would willingly return from the next world to contradict any person who described me other than I was, although he did it to honour me.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
Virtue shuns ease as a companion. It demands a rough and thorny path.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
The receipts of cookery are swelled to a volume, but a good stomach excels them all to which nothing contributes more than industry and temperance.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
I quote others only in order the better to express myself.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
We are all of us richer than we think we are.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
Some impose upon the world that they believe that which they do not others, more in number, make themselves believe that they believe, not being able to penetrate into what it is to believe.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
Every movement reveals us.
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
Is there anything so grave and serious as an ass?
Michel de Montaigne
Image
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.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
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
Image
I have never observed other effects of whipping than to render boys more cowardly, or more willfully obstinate.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
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
Image
And not to serve for a table-talk.
Michel de Montaigne
Image
Time steals away without any inconvenience.
Michel de Montaigne