Quotes by Michel de Montaigne

“We can be knowledgeable with other mens knowledge, but we cannot be wise with other mens wisdom.”

“I listen with attention to the judgement of all men; but so far as I can remember, I have followed none but my own”

“I shall tell you a great secret my friend. Do not wait for the last judgement, it takes place every day.”

“Whoever would be cured of ignorance must first confess it”

“Unless a man feels he has a good enough memory, he should never venture to lie.”

“Miracles arise from our ignorance of nature, not from nature itself”

“Everyone may speak truly, but to speak logically, prudently, and adequately is a talent few possess.”

“As plants are suffocated and drowned with too much moisture, and lamps with too much oil, so is the active part of the understanding with too much study”

“To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.”

“To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.”

“There are times when fear is good. It must keep its watchful place at the hearts controls. There is advantage in the wisdom won from pain.”

“A marriage is a series of friendships. Love serves as its underlying theme. Friendships provide it with the new challenges around which the relationship further develops. Each type of friendship with ones partner comes into being, rises to a peak of enthusiasm, and then wanes away in our cedar chest of sentimental values. Every once in a while we go to the chest and draw out a friendship item to give us a shot in the arm. Then we put it away till another day.”

“A happy marriage perhaps represents the ideal of human relationship / a setting in which each partner, while acknowledging the need of the other, feels free to be what he or she by nature is: a relationship in which instinct as well as intellect can find expression; in which giving and taking are equal; in which each accepts the other, and I confronts Thou.”

“No wind favors him who has no destined port.”

“One must always have ones boots on and be ready to go.”

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

“I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.”

“Dont discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose; if you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved”

“Man cannot make a worm, yet he will make gods by the dozen”

“I consider myself an average man, except in the fact that I consider myself an average man”