Quote

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

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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
Way
Theater
Alexander
Glory
Vigor
Virtue
Conceive
Less
Arrive
Place
Obscure
Cannot
Appears
Mean
Easily
Shortest
Much
Conscience
Socrates

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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'As a man who knows how to make his education into a rule of life not a means of showing off who can control himself and obey his own principles.' The true mirror of our discourse is the course of our lives.
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Women are not altogether in the wrong when they refuse the rules of life prescribed to the World, for men only have established them and without their consent.
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The beginnings of all things are weak and tender. We must therefore be clear-sighted in the beginnings, for, as in their budding we discern not the danger, so in their full growth we perceive not the remedy.
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'Tis the sharpness of our mind that gives the edge to our pains and pleasures.
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I quote others only in order the better to express myself.
Michel de Montaigne
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The perpetual work of your life is but to lay the foundation of death.
Michel de Montaigne
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It is not a mind, it is not a body that we educate, but it is a man, and we must not make two parts of him.
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Example is a bright looking-glass, universal and for all shapes to look into.
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The most certain sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness her state is like that of things in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene.
Michel de Montaigne
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For a desperate disease a desperate cure.
Michel de Montaigne
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Is there a polity better ordered, the offices better distributed, and more inviolably observed and maintained, than that of bees?
Michel de Montaigne
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Things seem greater by imagination than they are in effect.
Michel de Montaigne
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Petty vexations may at times be petty, but still they are vexations. The smallest and most inconsiderable annoyances are the most piercing. As small letters weary the eye most, so the smallest affairs disturb us most.
Michel de Montaigne
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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
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If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not even think of themselves.
Michel de Montaigne
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If my mind could gain a firm footing, I would not make essays, I would make decisions but it is always in apprenticeship and on trial.
Michel de Montaigne
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It takes so much to be a king that he exists only as such. That extraneous glare that surrounds him hides him and conceals him from us our sight breaks and is dissipated by it being filled and arrested by this strong light.
Michel de Montaigne
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Repentance is no other than a recanting of the will, and opposition to our fancies, which lead us which way they please.
Michel de Montaigne
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That is why Bias jested with those who were going through the perils of a great storm with him and calling on the gods for help: Shut up, he said, so that they do not realize that you are here with me.
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Human wisdom makes as ill use of her talent when she exercises it in rescinding from the number and sweetness of those pleasures that are naturally our due, as she employs it favorably and well in artificially disguising and tricking out the ills of life to alleviate the sense of them.
Michel de Montaigne