Quotes by Michel de Montaigne

I...think it much more supportable to be always alone, than never to be so.

A man with nothing to lend should refrain from borrowing.

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to live to yourself.

Experience has taught me this, that we undo ourselves by impatience. Misfortunes have their life and their limits, their sickness and their health.

What a prodigious conscience must that be that can be at quiet within itself whilst it harbors under thesame roof, with so agreeing and so calm a society, both the crime and the judge?

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

This emperor was arbiter of the whole world at nineteen, and yet would have a man to be thirty before he could be fit to determine a dispute about a gutter.

If you dont know how to die, dont worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; dont bother your head about it.

If I speak of myself in different ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways.

We need very strong ears to hear ourselves judged frankly, and because there are few who can endure frank criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to criticize us perform a remarkable act of friendship, for to undertake to wound or offend a man for his own good is to have a healthy love for him.

From books all I seek is to give myself pleasure by an honourable pastime: or if I do study, I seek only that branch of learning which deals with knowing myself and which teaches me how to live and die well...

We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.

We trouble our life by thoughts about death, and our death by thoughts about life.

Between ourselves, there are two things that I have always observed to be in singular accord: supercelestial thoughts and subterranean conduct.

Speech belongs half to the speaker, half to the listener.

Writing does not cause misery, it is born of misery.

Tis no wonder, says one of the ancients, that chance has so great a dominion over us, since it is by chance we live.

I do not believe, from what I have been told about this people, that there is anything barbarous or savage about them, except that we all call barbarous anything that is contrary to our own habits.

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

A man must live in the world and make the best of it such as it is.