Top 500 Michel de Montaigne Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “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

252. “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

253. “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

254. “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

255. “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

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

— Michel de Montaigne

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

— Michel de Montaigne

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

— Michel de Montaigne

259. “Dreams are faithful interpreters of our inclinations; but there is art required to sort and understand them.”

— Michel de Montaigne

260. “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

261. “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

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

— Michel de Montaigne

263. “The confidence in another man’s virtue is no light evidence of a man’s own, and God willingly favors such a confidence.”

— Michel de Montaigne

264. “The lack of wealth is easily repaired but the poverty of the soul is irreplaceable.”

— Michel de Montaigne

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

— Michel de Montaigne

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

— Michel de Montaigne

267. “A man should think less of what he eats and more with whom he eats because no food is so satisfying as good company.”

— Michel de Montaigne

268. “We are all of us richer than we think we are.”

— Michel de Montaigne

269. “We do not correct the man we hang; we correct others by him.”

— Michel de Montaigne

270. “The beauty of stature is the only beauty of men.”

— Michel de Montaigne

271. “Laws are maintained in credit, not because they are essentially just, but because they are laws. It is the mystical foundation of their authority; they have none other.”

— Michel de Montaigne

272. “I do not portray the thing in itself. I portray the passage; not a passing from one age to another, or, as the people put it, from seven years to seven years, but from day to day, from minute to minute.”

— Michel de Montaigne

273. “We wake sleeping, and sleep waking. I do not see so clearly in my sleep; but as to my being awake, I never found it clear enough and free from clouds.”

— Michel de Montaigne

274. “The profit we possess after study is to have become better and wiser.”

— Michel de Montaigne

275. “If your doctor does not think it good for you to sleep, to drink wine, or to eat of a particular dish, do not worry; I will find you another who will not agree with him.”

— Michel de Montaigne

276. “Wine is the benevolent god, who gives back gaiety to men and restores youth to the old.”

— Michel de Montaigne

277. “Man is the sole animal whose nudities offend his own companions, and the only one who, in his natural actions, withdraws and hides himself from his own kind.”

— Michel de Montaigne

278. “There is no knowledge so hard to acquire as the knowledge of how to live this life well and naturally.”

— Michel de Montaigne

279. “The daughter-in-law of Pythagoras said that a woman who goes to bed with a man ought to lay aside her modesty with her skirt, and put it on again with her petticoat.”

— Michel de Montaigne

280. “I set forth a humble and inglorious life; that does not matter. You can tie up all moral philosophy with a common and private life just as well as with a life of richer stuff. Each man bears the entire form of man’s estate.”

— Michel de Montaigne

281. “He that I am reading seems always to have the most force.”

— Michel de Montaigne

282. “Let us not be ashamed to speak what we shame not to think.”

— Michel de Montaigne

283. “Knowledge is an excellent drug; but no drug has virtue enough to preserve itself from corruption and decay, if the vessel be tainted and impure wherein it is put to keep.”

— Michel de Montaigne

284. “We are never present with, but always beyond ourselves; fear, desire, hope, still push us on toward the future.”

— Michel de Montaigne

285. “To philosophize is to doubt.”

— Michel de Montaigne

286. “One may be humble out of pride.”

— Michel de Montaigne

287. “Habituation puts to sleep the eye of our judgment.”

— Michel de Montaigne

288. “No-one is exempt from speaking nonsense – the only misfortune is to do it solemnly.”

— Michel de Montaigne

289. “Repentance is no other than a recanting of the will, and opposition to our fancies, which lead us which way they please.”

— Michel de Montaigne

290. “The most evident token and apparent sign of true wisdom is a constant and unconstrained rejoicing.”

— Michel de Montaigne

291. “He that had never seen a river imagined the first he met to be the sea; and the greatest things that have fallen within our knowledge we conclude the extremes that nature makes of the kind.”

— Michel de Montaigne

292. “Friendship that possesses the whole soul, and there rules and sways with an absolute sovereignty, can admit of no rival.”

— Michel de Montaigne

293. “The most profound joy has more of gravity than of gaiety in it.”

— Michel de Montaigne

294. “He who falls obstinate in his courage, if he falls he fights from his knees.”

— Michel de Montaigne

295. “Friendship is a creature formed for a companionship not for a herd.”

— Michel de Montaigne

296. “I am myself the matter of my book.”

— Michel de Montaigne

297. “Our zeal works wonders, whenever it supports our inclination toward hatred, cruelty, ambition.”

— Michel de Montaigne

298. “The Emperor Conrad III had besieged Guelph, Duke of Bavaria; no matter how base and cowardly were the satisfactions offered him, the most generous condition he would vouchsafe was to allow the noblewomen who had been besieged with the Duke to come out honourably on foot, together with whatever they could carry on their persons. They, with greatness of heart, decided to carry out on their shoulders their husbands, their children and the Duke himself.”

— Michel de Montaigne

299. “To smell, though well, is to stink.”

— Michel de Montaigne

300. “Even in the midst of compassion we feel within I know not what tart sweet titillation of malicious pleasure in seeing others suffer; children have the same feeling.”

— Michel de Montaigne