A man must be a little mad if he does not want to be even more stupid.
Quotes from Essais — Michel de Montaigne
1533–1592 France
← All quotes by Michel de Montaigne
142 quotes
Essais (1571)
The public weal requires that men should betray and lie and massacre.
Essais (1571)
How many valiant men we have seen to survive their own reputation!
Essais (1571)
Nature forms us for ourselves, not for others; to be, not to seem.
Essais (1571)
As far as physicians go, chance is more valuable than knowledge.
Essais (1571)
All of the days go toward death and the last one arrives there.
Essais (1571)
He who would teach men to die would teach them to live.
Essais (1571)
Men are most apt to believe what they least understand.
Essais (1571)
Few men have been admired by their own domestics.
Essais (1571)
Essais (1571)
I want death to find me planting my cabbages.
Essais (1571)
To an atheist all writings tend to atheism: he corrupts the most innocent matter with his own venom.
Essais (1571)
Things are not so painful and difficult of themselves, but our weakness or cowardice makes them so.
Essais (1571)
Essais (1571)
It would be better to have no laws at all than to have them in such profusion as we do.
Essais (1571)
Essais (1571)
He who does not give himself leisure to be thirsty cannot take pleasure in drinking.
Essais (1571)
All passions that suffer themselves to be relished and digested are but moderate.
Essais (1571)
Man is certainly crazy. He could not make a mite, and he makes gods by the dozen.
Essais (1571)
Attribution
Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Michel de Montaigne (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.