Quote

The height and value of true virtue consists in the facility, utility, and pleasure of its exercise so far from difficulty, that boys, as well as men, and the innocent as well as the subtle, may make it their own and it is by order and good conduct, and not by force, that it is to be acquired.

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
Force
Innocent
True
Difficulty
Facility
Order
Exercise
Utility
May
Value
Acquired
Wells
Boys
Conduct
Well
Virtue
Consists
Make
Pleasure
Height
Good
Values
Subtle

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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The middle sort of historians (of which the most part are) spoil all they will chew our meat for us.
Michel de Montaigne
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And to bring in a new word by the head and shoulders, they leave out the old one.
Michel de Montaigne
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Arts and sciences are not cast in a mould, but are found and perfected by degrees, by often handling and polishing.
Michel de Montaigne
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Example is a bright looking-glass, universal and for all shapes to look into.
Michel de Montaigne
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If you don't know how to die, don't worry Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you don't bother your head about it.
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Behold the hands, how they promise, conjure, appeal, menace, pray, supplicate, refuse, beckon, interrogate, admire, confess, cringe, instruct, command, mock and what not besides, with a variation and multiplication of variation which makes the tongue envious.
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
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Virtue cannot be followed but for herself, and if one sometimes borrows her mask to some other purpose, she presently pulls it away again.
Michel de Montaigne
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Those who make a practice of comparing human actions are never so perplexed as when they try to see them as a whole and in the same light for they commonly contradict each other so strangely that it seems impossible that they have come from the same shop.
Michel de Montaigne
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I am disgusted with innovation, in whatever guise, and with reason, for I have seen very harmful effects of it.
Michel de Montaigne
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The memory represents to us not what we choose but what it pleases.
Michel de Montaigne
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It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.
Michel de Montaigne
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If I were a maker of books I should compile a register, with comments, of different deaths. He who should teach people to die, would teach them to live.
Michel de Montaigne
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To behave rightly, we ourselves should never lay a hand on our servants as long as our anger lasts. Things will seem different to us when we have quieted and cooled down.
Michel de Montaigne
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Virtue can have naught to do with ease. . . . It craves a steep and thorny path.
Michel de Montaigne
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What am I to choose? Choose what you please, as long as you choose. There you have a foolish answer, which seems to be the outcome, however, of all Dogmatism, which will not allow us to be ignorant of that which we are ignorant.
Michel de Montaigne
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If others examined themselves attentively, as I do, they would find themselves, as I do, full of inanity and nonsense. Get rid of it I cannot without getting rid of myself.
Michel de Montaigne
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Meditation is a powerful and full study as can effectually taste and employ themselves.
Michel de Montaigne
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Wise people are foolish if they cannot adapt to foolish people.
Michel de Montaigne
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There is no greater enemy to those who would please than expectation.
Michel de Montaigne