Top 500 Michel de Montaigne Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens.”

— Michel de Montaigne

102. “The bees pillage the flowers here and there but they make honey of them which is all their own; it is no longer thyme or marjolaine: so the pieces borrowed from others he will transform and mix up into a work all his own.”

— Michel de Montaigne

103. “Whatever can be done another day can be done today.”

— Michel de Montaigne

104. “The plague of man is boasting of his knowledge.”

— Michel de Montaigne

105. “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.”

— Michel de Montaigne

106. “Thus we should beware of clinging to vulgar opinions, and judge things by reason’s way, not by popular say.”

— Michel de Montaigne

107. “When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her.”

— Michel de Montaigne

108. “A strong imagination begetteth opportunity.”

— Michel de Montaigne

109. “Presumption is our natural and original malady. The most vulnerable and frail of all creatures is man, and at the same time the most arrogant.”

— Michel de Montaigne

110. “There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.”

— Michel de Montaigne

111. “Our speech has its weaknesses and its defects, like all the rest. Most of the occasions for the troubles of the world are grammatical.”

— Michel de Montaigne

112. “Men are most apt to believe what they least understand.”

— Michel de Montaigne

113. “I walk firmer and more secure uphill than down.”

— Michel de Montaigne

114. “Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.”

— Michel de Montaigne

115. “Confidence in the goodness of another is good proof of one’s own goodness.”

— Michel de Montaigne

116. “The births of all things are weak and tender and therefore we should have our eyes intent on beginnings.”

— Michel de Montaigne

117. “If my intentions were not to be read in my eyes and voice, I should not have survived so long without quarrels and without harm, seeing the indiscreet freedom with which I say, right or wrong, whatever comes into my head.”

— Michel de Montaigne

118. “The thing I fear most is fear.”

— Michel de Montaigne

119. “And one might therefore say of me that in this book I have only made up a bunch of other people’s flowers, and that of my own I have only provided the string that ties them together.”

— Michel de Montaigne

120. “Off I go, rummaging about in books for sayings which please me.”

— Michel de Montaigne

121. “To understand via the heart is not to understand.”

— Michel de Montaigne

122. “The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.”

— Michel de Montaigne

123. “Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.”

— Michel de Montaigne

124. “No spiritual mind remains within itself; it is always aspiring and going beyond its own strength.”

— Michel de Montaigne

125. “I seek in the reading of books, only to please myself, by an honest diversion.”

— Michel de Montaigne

126. “Every man has within himself the entire human condition.”

— Michel de Montaigne

127. “Though we may be learned by another’s knowledge, we can never be wise but by our own experience.”

— Michel de Montaigne

128. “The reverse side of truth has a hundred thousand shapes and no defined limits.”

— Michel de Montaigne

129. “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

130. “The most certain sign of wisdom is continual cheerfulness; her state is like the things above the moon, always clear and serene.”

— Michel de Montaigne

131. “The customs and practices of life in society sweep us along.”

— Michel de Montaigne

132. “Saying is one thing, doing another. We must consider the sermon and the preacher distinctly and apart.”

— Michel de Montaigne

133. “Everyone gives the title of barbarism to everything that is not in use in his own country.”

— Michel de Montaigne

134. “The oldest and best known evil was ever more supportable than one that was new and untried.”

— Michel de Montaigne

135. “Why did I love her? Because it was her; because it was me.”

— Michel de Montaigne

136. “We are all of us richer than we think we are; but we are taught to borrow and to beg, and brought up more to make use of what is another’s than of our own.”

— Michel de Montaigne

137. “If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.”

— Michel de Montaigne

138. “Travelling through the world produces a marvellous clarity in the judgment of men. We are all of us confined and enclosed within ourselves, and see no farther than the end of our nose.”

— Michel de Montaigne

139. “I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.”

— Michel de Montaigne

140. “I have seen people rude by being over-polite.”

— Michel de Montaigne

141. “Physicians have this advantage: the sun lights their success and the earth covers their failures.”

— Michel de Montaigne

142. “We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, so that what we believe we disbelieve, and cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn .”

— Michel de Montaigne

143. “Nature is a gentle guide, but not more sweet and gentle than prudent and just.”

— Michel de Montaigne

144. “Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.”

— Michel de Montaigne

145. “If my mind could gain a firm footing, I would not make essays, I would make decisions; but it is always in apprenticeship and on trial.”

— Michel de Montaigne

146. “There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.”

— Michel de Montaigne

147. “We are all patchwork, and so shapeless and diverse in composition that each bit, each moment, plays its own game.”

— Michel de Montaigne

148. “There is nothing useless in nature; not even uselessness itself.”

— Michel de Montaigne

149. “He who would teach men to die would teach them to live.”

— Michel de Montaigne

150. “The greater part of the world’s troubles are due to questions of grammar.”

— Michel de Montaigne