Michel de Montaigne

“If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth, is as much to say, as that he is brave towards God and a coward towards men.”

“Would I fortify myself against the fear of death, it must be at the expense of Seneca: would I extract consolation for myself or my friend, I must borrow it from Cicero.  I might have found it in myself, had I been trained to make use of my own reason.  I do not like this relative and mendicant understanding; for though we could become learned by other men's learning, a man can never be wise but by his own wisdom.”

“And this puts me in mind of that rich gentleman of Rome, who had been solicitous, with great expense, to procure men that were excellent in all sorts of science, whom he had always attending his person, to the end, that when amongst his friends any occasion fell out of speaking of any subject whatsoever, they might supply his place, and be ready to prompt him, one with a sentence of Seneca, another with a verse of Homer, and so forth, every one according to his talent; and he fancied this knowledge to be his own, because it was in the heads of those who lived upon his bounty; as they, also, do whose learning consists in having great libraries.”

“Никой добродетел не взема за помощник лъжата.”

“Had I been placed among those nations which are said to live still in the sweet freedom of nature's first laws, I assure you I should very gladly have portrayed myself here entire and wholly naked.Thus, reader, I am myself the matter of my book; you would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so frivolous and vain a subject.”

“A person of honor chooses to loss his honor rather than his consicience”

“I have not seen anywhere in the world a more obvious malformed person and miracle than myself. Through use and time we become conditioned to anything strange; but the more I become familiar with and know myself, the more my deformity amazes me and the less I understand myself.”

“Mon métier et mon art c’est vivre. [My craft and my skill is living.]”

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

“In truth, knowledge is a great and very useful quality; those who despise it give evidence enough of their stupidity. Yet I do not set its value at that extreme measure that some attribute to it, such as the philosopher Herillus, who find in it the sovereign good and think it has the power to make us wise and happy.”

“If you don't know how to die, don't worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don't bother your head about it.”

“Rejoice in the things that are present; all else is beyond thee.”

“A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can.”

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

“If the pupil proves to be of so perverse a disposition that he would rather listen to some idle tale than to the account of a glorious voyage or to a wise conversation, when he hears one; if he turns away from the drum-beat that awakens young ardour in his comrades, to listen to another tattoo that summons him to a display of juggling; if he does not fervently feel it to be pleasanter and sweeter to return from a wrestling-match, dusty but victorious, with the prize in his hand, than from a game of tennis or a ball, I can see no other remedy that for his tutor to strangle him before it is too late, if there are no witnesses.”

“The ceaseless labor of your life is to build the house of death.”

“To censure my own faults in some other person seems to me no more incongruous than to censure, as I often do, another's in myself. They must be denounced everywhere, and be allowed no place of sanctuary.”

“I do not think that there is so much wretchedness in us as vanity; we are not so much wicked as daft; we are not so much full of evil as of inanity; we are not so much pitiful as despicable.”

“The most beautiful lives, to my mind,are those that conform to the common human pattern, with order, but without miracle, and without eccentricity.”

“Men have seemed miraculous to the world, in whom their wives and valets have never seen anything even worth noticing. Few men have been admired by their own households.”

“A noble heart should not belie its thoughts; it wants to reveal itself even to its inmost depths. There everything is good, at least everything is human.”

“Não há nada tão belo e legítimo quanto ser um homem de forma boa e adequada, nem conhecimento tão difícil de adquirir quanto o conhecimento de como viver esta vida bem e com naturalidade; e a mais bárbara de nossas doenças é desprezar o nosso ser.”

“The soul which has no fixed purpose in life is lost; to be everywhere is to be nowhere.es”

“No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port.”

“The pettiest and slightest nuisances are the most acute; and as small letters hurt and tire the eyes most, so do trifling matters sting us most.”

“He who fears he will suffer, already suffers from his fear.”

“Experience has further taught me this, that we ruin ourselves by impatience.”

“To learn that we have said or done a foolish thing, that is nothing; we must learn that we are nothing but fools, a far broader and more important lesson.”

“No spirited mind remains within itself; it is always aspiring and going beyond its strength; it has impulses beyond its power of achievement.”

“When a man is commonplace in discussion yet valued for what he writes that shows that his talents lie in his borrowed sources not in himself.”

“Ease crushes us.”

“The reverse side of truth has a hundred thousand shapes and no defined limits.”

“The man who establishes his argument by noise and command knows that his reason is weak.”

“If I am pressed to say why I loved him, I feel it can only be explained by replying: 'Because it was he; because it was me.”

“READER, You have here an honest book; it does at the outset forewarn You that, in contriving the same, I have proposed to myself no other than a domestic and private end: I have had no consideration at all either to Your service or to my glory. My powers are not capable of any such design. I have dedicated it to the particular commodity of my kinsfolk and friends, so that, having lost me (which they must do shortly), they may therein recover some traits of my conditions and humours, and by that means preserve more whole, and more life-like, the knowledge they had of me. Had my intention been to seek the world's favour, I should surely have adorned myself with borrowed beauties: I desire therein to be viewed as I appear in mine own genuine, simple, and ordinary manner, without study and artifice: for it is myself I paint. My defects are therein to be read to the life, and any imperfections and my natural form, so far as public reverence hath permitted me. If I had lived among those nations, which (they say) yet dwell under the sweet liberty of nature's primitive laws, I assure thee I would most willingly have painted myself quite fully and quite naked. Thus, reader, myself am the matter of my book: there's no reason You should employ Your leisure about so frivolous and vain a subject. Therefore farewell.”

“No one is exempt from speaking nonsense. The great misfortune is to do it solemnly.”

“If virtue cannot shine bright, but by the conflict of contrary appetites, shall we then say that she cannot subsist without the assistance of vice, and that it is from her that she derives her reputation and honor?”

“If I had even the slightest grasp upon my own faculties, I would not make essays, I would make decisions.”

“It is an absolute perfection and virtually divine to know how to enjoy our being rightfully. We seek other conditions because we do not understand the use of our own, and go outside of ourselves because we do not know what it is like inside. Yet there is no use our mounting on stilts, for on stilts we must still walk on our own legs. And on the loftiest throne in the world we are still sitting only on our own rump.”

“When I express my opinions it is so as to reveal the measure of my sight not the measure of the thing.”

“I know not what quintessence of all this mixture, which, seizing my whole will, carried it to plunge and lose itself in his, and that having seized his whole will, brought it back with equal concurrence and appetite to plunge and lose itself in mine.”

“Though the ancient poet in Plutarch tells us we must not trouble the gods with our affairs because they take no heed of our angers and disputes, we can never enough decry the disorderly sallies of our minds.”

“So it is with minds. Unless you keep them busy with some definite subject that will bridle and control them, they throw themselves in disorder hither and yon in the vague field of imagination... And there is no mad or idle fancy that they do not bring forth in the agitation.”

“Not being able to govern events, I govern myself”

“He who establishes his argument by noise and command, shows that his reason is weak.”

“If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.”

“I never rebel so much against France as not to regard Paris with a friendly eye; she has had my heart since my childhood.... I love her tenderly, even to her warts and her spots. I am French only by this great city: the glory of France, and one of the noblest ornaments of the world.”

“When I am attacked by gloomy thoughts,nothing helps me so much as running to my books.They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.”

“My life has been filled with terrible misfortune; most of which never happened.”

“Every other knowledge is harmful to him who does not have knowledge of goodness.”