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Who is it that does not voluntarily exchange his health, his repose, and his very life for reputation and glory? The most useless, frivolous, and false coin that passes current among us.

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
Among
Exchange
Health
Passes
Doe
Current
Life
Currents
Voluntarily
Reputation
Coin
Useless
Frivolous
False
Repose
Glory
Coins

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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A good marriage ... is a sweet association in life: full of constancy, trust, and an infinite number of useful and solid services and mutual obligations.
Michel de Montaigne
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Nature has with a Motherly Tenderness observed this, that the Action she has enjoyned us for our Necessity should be also pleasant to us, and invites us to them, not only by Reason, but also by Appetite: and ’tis Injustice to infringe her Laws.
Michel de Montaigne
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There is nothing of evil in life for him who rightly comprehends that death is no evil to know how to die delivers us from all subjection and constraint.
Michel de Montaigne
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Long life, and short, are by death made all one for there is no long, nor short, to things that are no more.
Michel de Montaigne
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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
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It is an injustice that an old, broken, half-dead father should enjoy alone, in a corner of his hearth, possessions that would suffice for the advancement and maintenance of many children.
Michel de Montaigne
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He that I am reading seems always to have the most force.
Michel de Montaigne
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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.
Michel de Montaigne
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Nor is it enough to toughen up his soul you must also toughen up his muscles.
Michel de Montaigne
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Vexations may be petty, but they are vexations still.
Michel de Montaigne
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It is far more probable that our senses should deceive us, than that an old woman should be carried up a chimney on a broom stick and that it is far less astonishing that witnesses should lie, than that witches should perform the acts that were alleged.
Michel de Montaigne
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It is probable that the principal credit of miracles, visions, enchantments, and such extraordinary occurrences comes from the power of imagination, acting principally upon the minds of the common people, which are softer.
Michel de Montaigne
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For there is no air that men so greedily draw in, that diffuses itself so soon, and that penetrates so deep as that of license.
Michel de Montaigne
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The pleasure we hold in esteem for the course of our lives ought to have a greater share of our time dedicated to it we should refuse no occasion nor omit any opportunity of drinking, and always have it in our minds.
Michel de Montaigne
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Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves by railing at it and yet it is not absolutely railing against anything, to proclaim its defects, because they are in all things to be found, how beautiful or how much to be coveted soever.
Michel de Montaigne
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Oh, what a valiant faculty is hope.
Michel de Montaigne
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There is no wish more natural than the wish to know.
Michel de Montaigne
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I am further of opinion that it would be better for us to have [no laws] at all than to have them in so prodigious numbers as we have.
Michel de Montaigne
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It should be noted that children at play are not playing about their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity.
Michel de Montaigne
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When I am attached by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books. They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.
Michel de Montaigne