Top 500 Michel de Montaigne Quotes (2023 Update)
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201. “Pride dwells in the thought; the tongue can have but a very little share in it.”

— Michel de Montaigne

202. “Time steals away without any inconvenience.”

— Michel de Montaigne

203. “Natural inclinations are assisted and reinforced by education, but they are hardly ever altered or overcome.”

— Michel de Montaigne

204. “To die is not to play a part in society; it is the act of a single person. Let us live and laugh among our friends; let us die and sulk among strangers.”

— Michel de Montaigne

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

— Michel de Montaigne

206. “A learned man is not learned in all things; but a sufficient man is sufficient throughout, even to ignorance itself.”

— Michel de Montaigne

207. “To know much is often the cause of doubting more.”

— Michel de Montaigne

208. “Scratching is one of nature’s sweetest gratifications, and the one nearest at hand.”

— Michel de Montaigne

209. “And not to serve for a table-talk.”

— Michel de Montaigne

210. “Nature should have been pleased to have made this age miserable, without making it also ridiculous.”

— Michel de Montaigne

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

— Michel de Montaigne

212. “Neither good nor ill is done to us by Fortune: she merely offers us the matter and the seeds: our soul, more powerful than she is, can mould it or sow them as she pleases, being the only cause and mistress of our happy state or our unhappiness.”

— Michel de Montaigne

213. “How many valiant men we have seen to survive their own reputation!”

— Michel de Montaigne

214. “If falsehood, like truth, had but one face, we would be more on equal terms. For we would consider the contrary of what the liar said to be certain. But the opposite of truth has a hundred thousand faces and an infinite field.”

— Michel de Montaigne

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

— Michel de Montaigne

216. “Love to his soul gave eyes; he knew things are not as they seem. The dream is his real life; the world around him is the dream.”

— Michel de Montaigne

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

— Michel de Montaigne

218. “A man should keep for himself a little back shop, all his own, quite unadulterated, in which he establishes his true freedom and chief place of seclusion and solitude.”

— Michel de Montaigne

219. “In the education of children there is nothing like alluring the interest and affection; otherwise you only make so many asses laden with books.”

— Michel de Montaigne

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

— Michel de Montaigne

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

— Michel de Montaigne

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

— Michel de Montaigne

223. “Wit is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not how to use it discreetly.”

— Michel de Montaigne

224. “The premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty; he who has learnt to die has forgot to serve.”

— Michel de Montaigne

225. “Who so hath his mind on taking, hath it no more on what he taketh.”

— Michel de Montaigne

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

— Michel de Montaigne

227. “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

228. “What kind of truth is this which is true on one side of a mountain and false on the other?”

— Michel de Montaigne

229. “Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.”

— Michel de Montaigne

230. “It is much more easy to accuse the one sex than to excuse the other.”

— Michel de Montaigne

231. “I may indeed very well happen to contradict myself; but truth, as Demades said, I do not contradict.”

— Michel de Montaigne

232. “I aim here only at revealing myself, who will perhaps be different tomorrow, if I learn something new which changes me.”

— Michel de Montaigne

233. “We imagine much more appropriately an artisan on his toilet seat or on his wife than a great president, venerable by his demeanorand his ability. It seems to us that they do not stoop from their lofty thrones even to live.”

— Michel de Montaigne

234. “If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not even think of themselves.”

— Michel de Montaigne

235. “You have your face bare; I am all face.”

— Michel de Montaigne

236. “The world is but a perennial movement. All things in it are in constant motion-the earth, the rocks of the Caucasus, the pyramids of Egypt-both with the common motion and with their own.”

— Michel de Montaigne

237. “No one but yourself knows whether you are cowardly and cruel, or loyal and devout; others do not see you; they surmise you by uncertain conjectures; they perceive not so much your nature as your art.”

— Michel de Montaigne

238. “A speech belongs half to the speaker and half to the listener.”

— Michel de Montaigne

239. “I speak the truth not so much as I would, but as much as I dare, and I dare a little more as I grow older.”

— Michel de Montaigne

240. “Difficulty is a coin which the learned conjure with so as not to reveal the vanity of their studies and which human stupidity is keen to accept in payment.”

— Michel de Montaigne

241. “The knowledge of courtesy and good manners is a very necessary study. It is like grace and beauty, that which begets liking and an inclination to love one another at the first sight.”

— Michel de Montaigne

242. “I would have every man write what he knows and no more.”

— Michel de Montaigne

243. “The art of dining well is no slight art, the pleasure no slight pleasure.”

— Michel de Montaigne

244. “Age imprints more wrinkles a in the mind, than it does in the face, and souls are never, or very rarely seen, that in growing old do not smell sour and musty. Man moves all together, both towards his perfection and decay.”

— Michel de Montaigne

245. “An ancient father says that a dog we know is better company than a man whose language we do not understand.”

— Michel de Montaigne

246. “No man dies before his hour. The time you leave behind was no more yours, than that which was before your birth, and concerneth you no more.”

— Michel de Montaigne

247. “Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows.”

— Michel de Montaigne

248. “In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page- boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk – they are all part of the curriculum.”

— Michel de Montaigne

249. “Experience has further taught me this, that we ruin ourselves by impatience.”

— Michel de Montaigne

250. “Custom is a second nature, and no less powerful.”

— Michel de Montaigne