“Though the ancient poet in Plutarch tells us we must not trouble the gods with our affairs because they take no heed… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
Presumption is our natural and original malady. The most vulnerable and frail of all creatures is man, and at the same time… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
While our pulse beats and we feel emotion, let us put off the business. Things will truly seem different to us when… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
We perceive no charms that are not sharpened, puffed out, and inflated by artifice. Those which glide along naturally and simply easily… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
We imagine much more appropriately an artisan on his toilet seat or on his wife than a great president, venerable by his… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
Others form man; I tell of him, and portray a particular one, very ill-formed, whom I should really make very different from… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
The most beautiful lives, to my mind, are those that conform to the common human pattern, with order, but without miracle and… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
What a wonderful thing it is that drop of seed, from which we are produced, bears in itself the impressions, not only… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
We have no participation in Being, because all human nature is ever midway between being born and dying, giving off only a… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
Those who make a practice of comparing human actions are never so perplexed as when they try to see them as a… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
Truly man is a marvelously vain, diverse, and undulating object. It is hard to found any constant and uniform judgment on him. — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
There is a certain amount of purpose, acquiescence, and satisfaction in nursing one's melancholy. — Michel De Montaigne Copy Share Image
There is nothing so noble and so right as to play our human life well and fitly, nor anything so difficult to… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
My opinion is that we must lend ourselves to others and give ourselves only to ourselves. If my will happened to be… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
Socrates ... brought human wisdom back down from heaven, where she was wasting her time, and restored her to man.... It is… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
Is it reasonable that even the arts should take advantage of and profit by our natural stupidity and feebleness of mind? — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
Our own peculiar human condition is that we are as fit to be laughed at as able to laugh. — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
O human creature,you are the investigator without knowledge, the magistrate without jurisdiction, and all in all, the fool of the farce. — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately. — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
The laws keep up their credit, not by being just, but because they are laws; 'tis the mystic foundation of their authority; they have… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self. — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
Beauty is the true prerogative of women, and so peculiarly their own, that our sex, though naturally requiring another sort of feature, is never… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
The height and value of true virtue consists in the facility, utility, and pleasure of its exercise; so far from difficulty, that boys, as… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
Fie on the eloquence that leaves us craving itself, not things! — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
The plainest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness: her state is like that of things in the regions above the moon, always clear… — Michel De Montaigne Copy Share Image
The corruption of the age is made up by the particular contribution of every individual man; some contribute treachery, others injustice, atheism, tyranny, avarice,… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
If people must be talking about me, I would have it to be truthfully and justly. I would willingly return from the next world… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
In true friendship, in which I am expert, I give myself to my friend more than I draw him to me. I not only… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
There are as many and innumerable degrees of wit, as there are cubits between this and heaven. — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
