Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own. — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
Learning is not to be tacked to the mind, but we must fuse and blend them together, not merely giving the mind… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
“Atheism being a proposition as unnatural as monstrous, difficult also and hard to establish in the human understanding, how arrogant soever, there… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
“I know nothing about education except this: that the greatest and the most important difficulty known to human learning seems to lie… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
Since I would rather make of him an able man than a learned man, I would also urge that care be taken… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
Persons of mean understandings, not so inquisitive, nor so well instructed, are made good Christians, and by reverence and obedience, implicity believe,… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
Their pupils and their little charges are not nourished and fed by what they learn: the learning is passed from hand to… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
Learning is a good medicine: but no medicine is powerful enough to preserve itself from taint and corruption independently of defects in… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
In general I ask for books that make use of learning, not those that build it up. — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
Business in a certain sort of men is a mark of understanding, and they are honored for it. Their souls seek repose… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
“Our understanding is conducted solely by means of the word: anyone who falsifies it betrays public society. It is the only tool… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
“We take other men's knowledge and opinions upon trust; which is an idle and superficial learning. We must make it our own.… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
I leaf through books, I do not study them. What I retain of them is something I no longer recognize as anyone… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
He was doubtless an understanding Fellow that said, there was no happy Marriage but betwixt a blind Wife and a deaf Husband. — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
“Human understanding is marvellously enlightened by daily conversation with men, for we are, otherwise, compressed and heaped up in ourselves, and have… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
Men of simple understanding, little inquisitive and little instructed, make good Christians. — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
Though we may be learned by another's knowledge, we can never be wise but by our own experience. — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
Certainly, if he still has himself, a man of understanding has lost nothing. — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
We should rather examine, who is better learned, than who is more learned. — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void. — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
[I]n my country, when they would say a man has no sense, they say, such an one has no memory; and when… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
We must not attach knowledge to the mind; we have to incorporate it there. — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
All we do is to look after the opinions and learning of others: we ought to make them our own. — 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