Quote

It is for little souls, that truckle under the weight of affairs, not to know how clearly to disengage themselves, and not to know how to lay them aside and take them up again.

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
Weight
Littles
Disengage
Aside
Soul
Affairs
Little
Affair
Take
Lays
Clearly
Souls

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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One open way of speaking introduces another open way of speaking, and draws out discoveries, like wine and love.
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I am afraid that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, and that we have more curiosity than understanding. We grasp at everything, but catch nothing except wind.
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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.
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How many quarrels, and how important, has the doubt as to the meaning of this syllable Hoc produced for the world!
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All other knowledge is hurtful to him who has not honesty and good-nature
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Is it not a noble farce, wherein kings, republics, and emperors have for so many ages played their parts, and to which the whole vast universe serves for a theatre?
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I may indeed very well happen to contradict myself but truth, as Demades said, I do not contradict.
Michel de Montaigne
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We have so much ill fortune as inconstancy, or so much bad purpose as folly, we are not so full of evil as we are of inanity we are not so wretched as we are base
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Every one is well or ill at ease, according as he finds himself! not he whom the world believes, but he who believes himself to be so, is content and in him alone belief gives itself being and reality
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Why dost thou complain of this world? It detains thee not thy own cowardice is the cause, if thou livest in pain.
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A strong imagination begetteth opportunity.
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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
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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
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A man has need of tough ears to hear himself fairly judged.
Michel de Montaigne
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How often, being moved under a false cause, if the person offending makes a good defense and presents us with a just excuse, are we angry against truth and innocence itself?
Michel de Montaigne
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Take care that old age does not wrinkle your spirit even more than your face.
Michel de Montaigne
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When all is summed up, a man never speaks of himself without loss his accusations of himself are always believed his praises never.
Michel de Montaigne
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The virtue of the soul does not consist in flying high, but in walking orderly.
Michel de Montaigne
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I speak the truth, not my fill of it, but as much as I dare speak and I dare to do so a little more as I grow old.
Michel de Montaigne
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If these Essays were worthy of being judged, it might fall out, in my opinion, that they would not find much favour, either with common and vulgar minds, or with uncommon and eminent ones: the former would not find enough in them, the latter would find too much they might manage to live somewhere in the middle region.
Michel de Montaigne