Home › Authors › Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne Quotes
1533–1592 France
Michel de Montaigne (Michel Eyquem, lord of the manor of Montaigne, Dordogne) (28 February 1533 – 13 September 1592) was an influential French Renaissance writer, generally considered to be the inventor of the personal essay.
France Essayists Mayors Philosophers Also known as: Michel E. de Montaigne, Michel Eyquem, seigneur de Montaigne, Michel Montaigne, Montaigne, Montaigne, Michel de
Random Michel de Montaigne quote
278 quotes
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)
Knowledge and truth may be in us without judgment, and judgment also without them; but the confession of ignorance is one of the finest and surest testimonies of judgment that I know.
Kings and philosophers shit, and so do ladies.
Essais (1571)
You have your face bare; I am all face.
Necessity is a violent school-mistress.
He loves little who loves by rule.
If others examined themselves attentively, as I do, they would find themselves, as I do, full of inanity and nonsense. Get rid of it I cannot without getting rid of myself.
"Companions," said he [Saturninus], "you have lost a good captain, to make of him a bad general."
We were halves throughout, and to that degree that, methinks, by outliving him I defraud him of his part.
Essais (1571)
How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables.
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)
Let us cut loose from all the ties that bind us to others; let us win from ourselves the power to live really alone and to live that way at our ease.
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)
Like rowers, who advance backward.
Essais (1571)
It is more of a job to interpret the interpretations than to interpret the things, and there are more books about books than about any other subject: we do nothing but write glosses about each other.
Essais (1571)
My trade and my art is living.
Essais (1571)
Topics Michel de Montaigne is quoted on
Works