Top 500 Michel de Montaigne Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “The greater part of the world’s troubles are due to questions of grammar.”

— Michel de Montaigne

152. “The great and glorious masterpiece of man is to live with purpose.”

— Michel de Montaigne

153. “There is no more expensive thing than a free gift.”

— Michel de Montaigne

154. “Health is a precious thing, and the only one, in truth, meriting that a man should lay out not only his time, sweat, labor and goods, but also life itself to obtain it.”

— Michel de Montaigne

155. “Life itself is neither a good nor an evil: life is where good or evil find a place, depending on how you make it for them.”

— Michel de Montaigne

156. “The word is half his that speaks, and half his that hears it.”

— Michel de Montaigne

157. “Women are not altogether in the wrong when they refuse the rules of life prescribed to the World, for men only have established them and without their consent.”

— Michel de Montaigne

158. “It should be noted that children at play are not playing about; their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity.”

— Michel de Montaigne

159. “It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.”

— Michel de Montaigne

160. “I have here only made a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the thread that tied them together.”

— Michel de Montaigne

161. “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

162. “Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle; but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages.”

— Michel de Montaigne

163. “Oh these foolish men! They could not create so much as a worm, but they create gods by the dozens.”

— Michel de Montaigne

164. “I want death to find me planting my cabbages.”

— Michel de Montaigne

165. “The thing in the world I am most afraid of is fear, and with good reason; that passion alone, in the trouble of it, exceeding all other accidents.”

— Michel de Montaigne

166. “Obstinacy and dogmatism are the surest signs of stupidity. Is there anything more confident, resolute, disdainful, grave and serious than an ass?”

— Michel de Montaigne

167. “Laws are often made by fools, and even more often by men who fail in equity because they hate equality: but always by men, vain authorities who can resolve nothing.”

— Michel de Montaigne

168. “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

169. “We must learn to suffer what we cannot evade; our life, like the harmony of the world, is composed of contrary things, and one part is no less necessary than the other.”

— Michel de Montaigne

170. “Desire and hope will push us on toward the future.”

— Michel de Montaigne

171. “Since philosophy is the art which teaches us how to live, and since children need to learn it as much as we do at other ages, why do we not instruct them in it?”

— Michel de Montaigne

172. “The most fruitful and natural exercise for our minds is, in my opinion, conversation.”

— Michel de Montaigne

173. “Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of soul, impossible.”

— Michel de Montaigne

174. “There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.”

— Michel de Montaigne

175. “I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind – and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.”

— Michel de Montaigne

176. “Without doubt, it is a delightful harmony when doing and saying go together.”

— Michel de Montaigne

177. “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.”

— Michel de Montaigne

178. “There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.”

— Michel de Montaigne

179. “The corruption of the age is made up by the particular contribution of every individual man; some contribute treachery, others injustice, atheism, tyranny, avarice, cruelty, according to their power.”

— Michel de Montaigne

180. “Nor is it enough to toughen up his soul; you must also toughen up his muscles.”

— Michel de Montaigne

181. “It would be better to have no laws at all, than to have too many.”

— Michel de Montaigne

182. “I quote others only in order the better to express myself.”

— Michel de Montaigne

183. “All permanent decisions are made in a temporary state of mind.”

— Michel de Montaigne

184. “The wise man lives as long as he ought, not so long as he can.”

— Michel de Montaigne

185. “I do not teach. I relate.”

— Michel de Montaigne

186. “I seek in books only to give myself pleasure by honest amusement; or if I study, I seek only the learning that treats of the knowledge of myself and instructs me in how to die well and live well.”

— Michel de Montaigne

187. “I love a friendship that flatters itself in the sharpness and vigor of its communications.”

— Michel de Montaigne

188. “Women are not entirely wrong when they reject the moral rules proclaimed in society, since it is we men alone who have made them.”

— Michel de Montaigne

189. “If I were of the trade, I should naturalize art as much as they “artialize” nature.”

— Michel de Montaigne

190. “In nine lifetimes, you’ll never know as much about your cat as your cat knows about you.”

— Michel de Montaigne

191. “God is favorable to those whom he makes to die by degrees; ’tis the only benefit of old age. The last death will be so much the less painful: it will kill but a quarter of a man or but half a one at most.”

— Michel de Montaigne

192. “How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables.”

— Michel de Montaigne

193. “The conduct of our lives is the true mirror of our doctrine.”

— Michel de Montaigne

194. “Men of simple understanding, little inquisitive and little instructed, make good Christians.”

— Michel de Montaigne

195. “To make a crooked stick straight, we bend it the contrary way.”

— Michel de Montaigne

196. “Intemperance is the plaque of sensuality, and temperance is not its bane but its seasoning.”

— Michel de Montaigne

197. “It is not a mind, it is not a body that we educate, but it is a man, and we must not make two parts of him.”

— Michel de Montaigne

198. “I love a gay and sociable wisdom, and shun harshness and austerity in behaviour, holding every surly countenance suspect.”

— Michel de Montaigne

199. “The body enjoys a great share in our being, and has an eminent place in it. Its structure and composition, therefore, are worthy of proper consideration.”

— Michel de Montaigne

200. “The way of the world is to make laws, but follow custom.”

— Michel de Montaigne