Michel de Montaigne

“We must not attach knowledge to the mind, we have to incorporate it there.”

“The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use; some men have lived long, and lived little; attend to it while you are in it. It lies in your will, not in the number of years, for you to have lived enough.”

“The thing I fear most is fear.”

“I will follow the good side right to the fire, but not into it if I can help it.”

“No matter that we may mount on stilts, we still must walk on our own legs. And on the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.”

“Kings and philosophers defecate, and so do ladies.”

“When I play with my cat, how do I know that she is not playing with me rather than I with her?”

“La foiblesse de nostre condition, fait que les choses en leur simplicité et pureté naturelle ne puissent pas tomber en nostre usage...Nostre extreme volupté a quelque air de gemissement, et de plainte.”

“There is no passion so much transports thesincerity of judgement as doth anger”

“I have never seen a greater monster or miracle than myself.”

“Life should be an aim unto itself, a purpose unto itself.”

“Can anything be imagined so ridiculous, that this miserable and wretched creature [man], who is not so much as master of himself, but subject to the injuries of all things, should call himself master and emperor of the world, of which he has not power to know the least part, much less to command the whole?”

“Kings and philosophers shit—and so do ladies.”

“Human understanding is marvellously enlightened by daily conversation with men, for we are, otherwise, compressed and heaped up in ourselves, and have our sight limited to the length of our own noses.”

“There is nothing more unsociable than man, and nothing more sociable: unsociable by his vice, sociable by his nature.”

“Don't discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose; if you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved.”

“There is more ado to interpret interpretations than to interpret things, and more books upon books than upon any other subject; we do nothing but comment upon one another. Every place swarms with commentaries; of authors there is great scarcity.”

“Handling and use by able minds give value to a language, not so much by innovating as by filling it out with more vigorous and varied services, by stretching and bending it.”

“~The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them ~”

“On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.”

“I listen with attention to the judgment of all men;but so far as I can remember,I have followed none but my own.”

“El amor no es más que el deseo furioso de algo que huye de nosotros...”

“No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately.”

“I care not so much what I am in the opinion of others, as what I am in my own.”

“No man is so exquisitely honest or upright in living, but that ten timesin his life he might not lawfully be hanged.”

“Let the tutor make his charge pass everything through a sieve and lodge nothing in his head on mere authority and trust: let not Aristotle's principles be principles to him any more than those of the Stoics or Epicureans. Let this variety of ideas be set before him; he will choose if he can; if not, he will remain in doubt. Only the fools are certain and assured. For if he embraces Xenophon's and Plato's opinions by his own reasoning, they will no longer be theirs, they will be his. He who follows another follows nothing. He finds nothing; indeed he seeks nothing. We are not under a king; let each one claim his own freedom. Let him know that he knows, at least. He must imbibe their ways of thinking, not learn their precepts. And let him boldly forget, if he wants, where he got them, but let him know how to make them his own. Truth and reason are common to everyone, and no more belong to the man who first spoke them than to the man who says them later. It is no more according to Plato than according to me, since he and I understand and see it the same way. The bees plunder the flowers here and there, but afterward they make of them honey, which is all theirs; it is no longer thyme or marjoram. Even so with the pieces borrowed from others; he will transform and blend them to make a work of his own, to wit, his judgment. His education, work, and study aim only at forming this.”

“Let this variety of ideas be set before him; he will choose if he can; if not, he will remain in doubt. Only the fools are certain and assured. For if he embraces Xenophon's and Plato's opinions by his own reasoning, they will no longer be theirs, they will be his. He who follows another follows nothing. He finds nothing; indeed he seeks nothing. We are not under a king; let each one claim his own freedom [Seneca]. Let him know that he knows, at least. He must imbibe their ways of thinking, not learn their precepts. And let him boldly forget, if he wants, where he got them, but let him know how to make them his own. Truth and reason are common to everyone, and no more belong to the man who first spoke them than to the man who says them later. It is no more according to Plato than according to me, since he and I understand and see it the same way. The bees plunder the flowers here and there, but afterward they make of them honey, which is all theirs; it is no longer thyme or marjoram. Even so with the pieces borrowed from others; he will transform and blend them to make a work of his own, to wit, his judgment. His education, work, and study aim only at forming this.”

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

“Valor is strength, not of legs and arms, but of heart and soul; it consists not in the worth of our horse or our weapons, but in our own.”

“It is not reasonable that art should win the place of honor over our great and powerful mother Nature. We have so overloaded the beauty and richness of her works by our inventions that we have quite smothered her.”

“All is a-swarm with commentaries: of authors there is a dearth.”

“When I dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep; yes, and when I walk alone in a beautiful orchard, if my thoughts drift to far-off matters for some part of the time for some other part I lead them back again to the walk, the orchard, to the sweetness of this solitude, to myself.”

“For I make others say what I cannot say so well,... I do not count my borrowings, but, weight them.... They are all, or very nearly all, from such famous and ancient names that they seem to identify themselves enough without me. ”

“There were many terrible things in my life and most of them never happened.”

“You never speak about yourself without loss. Your self-condemnation is always accredited, your self-praise discredited. There may be some people of my temperament, I who learn better by contrast than by example, and by flight than by pursuit. This was the sort of teaching that Cato the Elder had in view when he said that the wise have more to learn from the fools than the fools from the wise; and also that ancient lyre player who, Pausanias tells us, was accustomed to force his pupils to go hear a bad musician who lived across the way, where they might learn to hate his discords and false measures.”

“It is only certain that there is nothing certain, and that nothing is more miserable or more proud than man.”

“The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make to them; a man may live long, yet get little from life. Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will - Montaigne, Essays”

“Death is not one of our social managements; it is a scene with one character.”

“Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head”

“No one should be subjected to force over things which belonged to him.”

“In our time the most warlike nations are the most rude and ignorant.”

“Judgement can do without knowledge: but not knowledge without judgement.”

“Off I go, rummaging about in books for sayings which please me.”

“All we do is to look after the opinions and learning of others: we ought to make them our own.”

“We should tend our freedom wisely.”

“The customs and practices of life in society sweep us along.”

“It is a disaster that wisdom forbids you to be satisfied with yourself and always sends you away dissatisfied and fearful, whereas stubbornness and foolhardiness fill their hosts with joy and assurance.”

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

“Every man has within himself the entire human condition”

“The most fruitful and natural exercise for our minds is, in my opinion, conversation.”