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Quotes from Essais — Michel de Montaigne

1533–1592 France

← All quotes by Michel de Montaigne

142 quotes

How many things served us yesterday for articles of faith, which today are fables for us?

Essais (1571)

The thing I fear most is fear.

Essais (1571)

It is the part of cowardice, not of courage, to go and crouch in a hole under a massive tomb, to avoid the blows of fortune.

Essais (1571)

I have here only made a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the thread that ties them together.

Essais (1571)

All the world knows me in my book, and my book in me.

Essais (1571)

To which we may add this other Aristotelian consideration, that he who confers a benefit on any one loves him better than he is beloved by him again.

Essais (1571)

Arts and sciences are not cast in a mould, but are formed and perfected by degrees, by often handling and polishing, as bears leisurely lick their cubs into form.

Essais (1571)

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

Essais (1571)

There were never in the world two opinions alike, any more than two hairs or two grains. Their most universal quality is diversity.

Essais (1571)

She [virtue] requires a rough and stormy passage; she will have either outward difficulties to wrestle with, ... or internal difficulties.

Essais (1571)

A man may be humble through vainglory.

Essais (1571)

My appetite comes to me while eating.

Essais (1571)

Since I would rather make of him an able man than a learned man, I would also urge that care be taken to choose a guide with a well-made rather than a well-filled head.

Essais (1571)

I live from day to day, and content myself with having enough to meet my present and ordinary needs; for the extraordinary, all the provision in the world could not suffice.

Essais (1571)

Kings and philosophers shit, and so do ladies.

Essais (1571)

We were halves throughout, and to that degree that, methinks, by outliving him I defraud him of his part.

Essais (1571)

I am further of opinion that it would be better for us to have [no laws] at all than to have them in so prodigious numbers as we have.

Essais (1571)

We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, which is the cause that what we believe we do not believe, and cannot disengage ourselves from what we condemn.

Essais (1571)

Saying is one thing, doing another.

Essais (1571)

And not to serve for a table-talk.

Essais (1571)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Michel de Montaigne (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.