Top 500 Michel de Montaigne Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.”

— Michel de Montaigne

Featured in: Confidence Quotes, Self-Esteem Quotes

2. “My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.”

— Michel de Montaigne

Featured in: Funny Quotes About Life

3. “A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.”

— Michel de Montaigne

4. “There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.”

— Michel de Montaigne

Featured in: Boredom Quotes

5. “If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.”

— Michel de Montaigne

Featured in: Marriage Quotes

6. “Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.”

— Michel de Montaigne

Featured in: Veteran's Day Quotes

7. “There were many terrible things in my life and most of them never happened.”

— Michel de Montaigne

8. “No wind favors he who has no destined port.”

— Michel de Montaigne

9. “Ambition is not a vice of little people.”

— Michel de Montaigne

Featured in: Ambition Quotes

10. “A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.”

— Michel de Montaigne

Featured in: Humor Quotes, Marriage Quotes

11. “The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.”

— Michel de Montaigne

12. “The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.”

— Michel de Montaigne

13. “We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.”

— Michel de Montaigne

14. “Kings and philosophers defecate, and so do ladies.”

— Michel de Montaigne

15. “The soul which has no fixed purpose in life is lost; to be everywhere, is to be nowhere.”

— Michel de Montaigne

16. “I want death to find me planting my cabbages, but careless of death, and still more of my unfinished garden.”

— Michel de Montaigne

17. “Stubborn and ardent clinging to one’s opinion is the best proof of stupidity.”

— Michel de Montaigne

18. “Habit is second nature.”

— Michel de Montaigne

19. “The beautiful souls are they that are universal, open, and ready for all things.”

— Michel de Montaigne

20. “A man is not hurt so much by what happens, as by his opinion of what happens.”

— Michel de Montaigne

21. “I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself, and not by borrowing.”

— Michel de Montaigne

Featured in: Respect Quotes

22. “There never were, in the world, two opinions alike, no more than two hairs, or two grains; the most universal quality is diversity.”

— Michel de Montaigne

23. “Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.”

— Michel de Montaigne

24. “I listen with attention to the judgment of all men; but so far as I can remember, I have followed none but my own.”

— Michel de Montaigne

25. “No noble thing can be done without risks.”

— Michel de Montaigne

26. “I consider myself an average man, except in the fact that I consider myself an average man.”

— Michel de Montaigne

27. “Children’s games are hardly games. Children are never more serious than when they play.”

— Michel de Montaigne

28. “My art and profession is to live.”

— Michel de Montaigne

29. “I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided if greater pains be the consequence, and pains to be coveted that will terminate in greater pleasures.”

— Michel de Montaigne

30. “A man must keep a little back shop where he can be himself without reserve. In solitude alone can he know true freedom.”

— Michel de Montaigne

31. “Not being able to govern events, I govern myself, and apply myself to them if they will not apply themselves to me.”

— Michel de Montaigne

32. “Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.”

— Michel de Montaigne

33. “Wise people are foolish if they cannot adapt to foolish people.”

— Michel de Montaigne

34. “Obsession is the wellspring of genius and madness.”

— Michel de Montaigne

35. “We need to interpret interpretations more than to interpret things.”

— Michel de Montaigne

36. “The only thing certain is nothing is certain.”

— Michel de Montaigne

37. “The most universal quality is diversity.”

— Michel de Montaigne

38. “Don’t discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose; if you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved.”

— Michel de Montaigne

39. “One should always have one’s boots on and be ready to leave.”

— Michel de Montaigne

40. “Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, inquiry the progress, ignorance the end.”

— Michel de Montaigne

41. “Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head.”

— Michel de Montaigne

42. “When I dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep; yes, and when I walk alone in a beautiful orchard, if my thoughts drift to far-off matters for some part of the time for some other part I lead them back again to the walk, the orchard, to the sweetness of this solitude, to myself.”

— Michel de Montaigne

43. “Friendship is the highest degree of perfection in society.”

— Michel de Montaigne

44. “We cannot fail in following nature.”

— Michel de Montaigne

45. “On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.”

— Michel de Montaigne

46. “If I speak of myself in different ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways.”

— Michel de Montaigne

47. “We trouble our life by thoughts about death, and our death by thoughts about life.”

— Michel de Montaigne

48. “I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics.”

— Michel de Montaigne

49. “I turn my gaze inward. I fix it there and keep it busy. I look inside myself. I continually observe myself.”

— Michel de Montaigne

50. “Learned we may be with another man’s learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own.”

— Michel de Montaigne