Quote

We do not marry for ourselves, whatever we say we marry just as much or more for our posterity, for our family. The practice and benefit of marriage concerns our race very far beyond 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
Practice
Posterity
Race
Concerns
Whatever
Marry
Family
Benefit
Much
Benefits
Concern
Marriage
Beyond

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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Our skin is provided as adequately as theirs with endurance against the assaults of the weather: witness so many nations who have not yet tried the use of any clothes. Our ancient Gauls wore hardly any clothes nor do the Irish, our neighbors, under so cold a sky.
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Now, of all the benefits that virtue confers upon us, the contempt of death is one of the greatest.
Michel de Montaigne
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The public weal requires that men should betray, and lie, and massacre.
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The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mould
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Every man may speak truly, but to speak methodically, prudently, and fully is a talent that few men have.
Michel de Montaigne
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A man never speaks of himself without losing something. What he says in his disfavor is always beleived, but when he commends himself, he arouses mistrust.
Michel de Montaigne
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Nature has, herself, I fear, imprinted in man a kind of instinct to inhumanity.
Michel de Montaigne
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The honor we receive from those that fear us, is not honor those respects are paid to royalty and not to me.
Michel de Montaigne
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It is in the enjoyment and not in mere possession that makes for happiness.
Michel de Montaigne
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I see this evident, that we willingly accord to piety only the services that flatter our passions.
Michel de Montaigne
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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 perhaps no more obvious vanity than to write of it so vainly.
Michel de Montaigne
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Seeing that the Senses cannot decide our dispute, being themselves full of uncertainty, we must have recourse to Reason there is no reason but must be built upon another reason: so here we are retreating backwards to infinity.
Michel de Montaigne
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If I were of the trade, I should naturalize art as much as they artialize nature.
Michel de Montaigne
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Such as are in immediate fear of a losing their estates, of banishment, or of slavery, live in perpetual anguish, and lose all appetite and repose whereas such as are actually poor, slaves, or exiles, ofttimes live as merrily as other folk.
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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We call comeliness a mischance in the first respect, which belongs principally to the face.
Michel de Montaigne
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I put forward formless and unresolved notions, as do those who publish doubtful questions to debate in the schools, not to establish the truth but to seek it.
Michel de Montaigne
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We hold death, poverty, and grief for our principal enemies but this death, which some repute the most dreadful of all dreadful things, who does not know that others call it the only secure harbor from the storm and tempests of life, the sovereign good of nature, the sole support of liberty, and the common and sudden remedy of all evils?
Michel de Montaigne
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Water, earth, air, fire, and the other parts of this structure of mine are no more instruments of your life than instruments of your death. Why do you fear your last day? It contributes no more to your death than each of the others. The last step does not cause the fatigue, but reveals it. All days travel toward death, the last one reaches it.
Michel de Montaigne