Top 500 Michel de Montaigne Quotes (2023 Update)
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451. “I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.”

— Michel de Montaigne

452. “Covetousness is both the beginning and the end of the devil’s alphabet – the first vice in corrupt nature that moves, and the last which dies.”

— Michel de Montaigne

453. “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.”

— Michel de Montaigne

454. “Virtue shuns ease as a companion. It demands a rough and thorny path.”

— Michel de Montaigne

455. “It is the part of cowardliness, and not of virtue, to seek to squat itself in some hollow lurking hole, or to hide herself under some massive tomb, thereby to shun the strokes of fortune.”

— Michel de Montaigne

456. “Everyone calls barbarity what he is not accustomed to.”

— Michel de Montaigne

457. “Petty vexations may at times be petty, but still they are vexations. The smallest and most inconsiderable annoyances are the most piercing. As small letters weary the eye most, so the smallest affairs disturb us most.”

— Michel de Montaigne

458. “If health and a fair day smile upon me, I am a very good fellow; if a corn trouble my toe, I am sullen, out of humor, and inaccessible.”

— Michel de Montaigne

459. “Ambition sufficiently plagues her proselytes, by keeping themselves always in show, like the statue of a public place.”

— Michel de Montaigne

460. “T is one and the same Nature that rolls on her course, and whoever has sufficiently considered the present state of things might certainly conclude as to both the future and the past.”

— Michel de Montaigne

461. “Ceremony forbids us to express by words things that are lawful and natural, and we obey it; reason forbids us to do things unlawful and ill, and nobody obeys it.”

— Michel de Montaigne

462. “A volunteer, you assign yourself specific roles and risks according to your judgement of their brilliance and importance, and you see when life itself may be justifiably devoted to them.”

— Michel de Montaigne

463. “No pleasure has any savor for me without communication.”

— Michel de Montaigne

464. “We seek and offer ourselves to be gulled.”

— Michel de Montaigne

465. “To how many blockheads of my time has a cold and taciturn demeanor procured the credit of prudence and capacity!”

— Michel de Montaigne

466. “Those things that are dearest to us have cost us the most.”

— Michel de Montaigne

467. “As far as physicians go, chance is more valuable than knowledge.”

— Michel de Montaigne

468. “If I am to serve as an instrument of deceit, at least let it be with a clear conscience. I do not want to be considered either so affectionate or so loyal a servant as to be found fit to betray anyone.”

— Michel de Montaigne

469. “A lady could not boast of her chastity who was never tempted.”

— Michel de Montaigne

470. “The only good histories are those written by those who had command in the events they describe.”

— Michel de Montaigne

471. “There are no truths, only moments of claryty passing for answers.”

— Michel de Montaigne

472. “The curiosity of knowing things has been given to man for a scourge.”

— Michel de Montaigne

473. “The most useful and honorable science and occupation for a woman is the science of housekeeping. I know some that are miserly, very few that are good managers.”

— Michel de Montaigne

474. “My business is only to keep myself in motion, whilst motion pleases me; I only walk for the walk’s sake.”

— Michel de Montaigne

475. “The worst of my actions or conditions seem not so ugly unto me as I find it both ugly and base not to dare to avouch for them.”

— Michel de Montaigne

476. “I had rather complain of ill-fortune than be ashamed of victory.”

— Michel de Montaigne

477. “No wonder, said an Ancient, that chance has so much power over us, since it is by chance that we live.”

— Michel de Montaigne

478. “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

479. “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

480. “God defend me from being an honest man according to the description which every day I see made by each man to his own glorification.”

— Michel de Montaigne

481. “An untempted woman cannot boast of her chastity.”

— Michel de Montaigne

482. “Examples teach us that in military affairs, and all others of a like nature, study is apt to enervate and relax the courage of man, rather than to give strength and energy to the mind.”

— Michel de Montaigne

483. “The first distinction among men, and the first consideration that gave one precedence over another, was doubtless the advantage of beauty.”

— Michel de Montaigne

484. “I look upon the too good opinion that man has of himself, as the nursing mother of all false opinions, both public and private.”

— Michel de Montaigne

485. “A man must always study, but he must not always go to school: what a contemptible thing is an old abecedarian!”

— Michel de Montaigne

486. “Any person of honor chooses rather to lose his honor than to lose his conscience.”

— Michel de Montaigne

487. “A man has need of tough ears to hear himself fairly judged.”

— Michel de Montaigne

488. “All passions that suffer themselves to be relished and digested are but moderate.”

— Michel de Montaigne

489. “The religion of my doctor or my lawyer cannot matter. That consideration has nothing in common with the functions of the friendship they owe me.”

— Michel de Montaigne

490. “Report followeth not all goodness, except difficulty and rarity be joined thereto.”

— Michel de Montaigne

491. “As for extraordinary things, all the provision in the world would not suffice.”

— Michel de Montaigne

492. “Socrates thought and so do I that the wisest theory about the gods is no theory at all.”

— Michel de Montaigne

493. “We are Christians by the same title as we are natives of Perigord or Germany.”

— Michel de Montaigne

494. “I have ever loved to repose myself, whether sitting or lying, with my heels as high or higher than my head.”

— Michel de Montaigne

495. “It is only certain that there is nothing certain, and that nothing is more miserable or more proud than man.”

— Michel de Montaigne

496. “Most men are rich in borrowed sufficiency: a man may very well say a good thing, give a good answer, cite a good sentence, without at all seeing the force of either the one or the other.”

— Michel de Montaigne

497. “There is no greater enemy to those who would please than expectation.”

— Michel de Montaigne

498. “The bitterness of the potion, and the abhorrence of the patient are necessary circumstances to the operation. It must be something to trouble and disturb the stomach that must purge and cure it.”

— Michel de Montaigne

499. “The memory represents to us not what we choose but what it pleases.”

— Michel de Montaigne

500. “The worst condition of humans is when they lose knowledge and control of themselves.”

— Michel de Montaigne