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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

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

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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... whoever believes anything esteems that it is a work of charity to persuade another of it.
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It has never occurred to me to wish for empire or royalty, nor for the eminence of those high and commanding fortunes. My aim lies not in that direction I love myself too well.
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I seek in the reading of books, only to please myself, by an honest diversion.
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To divert myself from a troublesome fancy, it is but to run to my books they presently fix me to them, and drive the other out of my thoughts, and do not mutiny to see that I have only recourse to them for want of other more, real, natural, and lively conveniences they always receive me with the same kindness.
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We must learn to suffer what we cannot evade.
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Meditation is a rich and powerful method of study for anyone who knows how to examine his mind.
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I agree that we should work and prolong the functions of life as far as we can, and hope that Death may find me planting my cabbages, but indifferent to him and still more to the unfinished state of my garden.
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A woman is no sooner ours than we are no longer hers.
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How many valiant men we have seen to survive their own reputation!
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There is a sort of gratification in doing good which makes us rejoice in ourselves.
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Things are not bad in themselves, but our cowardice makes them so.
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Things seem greater by imagination than they are in effect.
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In order always to learn something from others (which is the finest school there can be), I observe in my travels this practice: I always steer those with whom I talk back to the things they know best.
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I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie.
Michel de Montaigne
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The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
Michel de Montaigne
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I do not portray the thing in itself. I portray the passage not a passing from one age to another, or, as the people put it, from seven years to seven years, but from day to day, from minute to minute.
Michel de Montaigne
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A man may be humble through vainglory.
Michel de Montaigne
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Let us permit nature to have her way. She understands her business better than we do.
Michel de Montaigne
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To philosophize is nothing else than to prepare oneself for death.
Michel de Montaigne
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The shortest way to arrive at glory should be to do that for conscience which we do for glory. And the virtue of Alexander appears to me with much less vigor in his theater than that of Socrates in his mean and obscure. I can easily conceive Socrates in the place of Alexander, but Alexander in that of Socrates I cannot.
Michel de Montaigne