Quotes by Michel de Montaigne

The Ancient Mariner said to Neptune during a great storm O God you will save me if you wish but I am going to go on holding my tiller straight.

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

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be ones own self

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

I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself and not by borrowing.

Of all our infirmities the most savage is to despise our being.

Not being able to govern events I govern myself.

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.

When I religiously confess myself to myself I find that the best virtue I have has in it some tincture of vice.

A wise man sees as much as he ought not as much as he can.

The word is half his that speaks and half his that hears it.

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.

I walk firmer and more secure up hill than down.

I quote others in order to better express my own self.

I never rebel so much against France as not to regard Paris with a friendly eye; she has had my heart since my childhood.... I love her tenderly, even to her warts and her spots. I am French only by this great city: the glory of France, and one of the noblest ornaments of the world.

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

Those who have compared our life to a dream were right... we were sleeping wake, and waking sleep.

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.

No pleasure has any savor for me without communication.

Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words azimuth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.