Nature Quotes by Michel de Montaigne

Habit is a second nature.

— Michel de Montaigne

I want death to find me planting my cabbages.

— Michel de Montaigne

Habit is second nature.

— Michel de Montaigne

We cannot fail in following nature.

— Michel de Montaigne

Nature is a gentle guide, but not more sweet and gentle than prudent and just.

— Michel de Montaigne

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

— Michel de Montaigne

There is nothing useless in nature; not even uselessness itself

— Michel de Montaigne

There is no wish more natural than the wish to know.

— Michel de Montaigne

The laws of conscience, though we ascribe them to nature, actually come from custom.

— Michel de Montaigne

Custom is a second nature, and no less powerful.

— Michel de Montaigne

Miracles arise from our ignorance of nature, not from nature itself.

— Michel de Montaigne

Scratching is one of nature's sweetest gratifications, and nearest at hand.

— Michel de Montaigne

I want to be seen here in my simple, natural, ordinary fashion, without straining or artifice; for it is myself that I…

— Michel de Montaigne

Amongst all other vices there is none I hate more than cruelty, both by nature and judgment, as the extremest of all…

— Michel de Montaigne

It is indeed the boundary of life, beyond which we are not to pass; which the law of nature has pitched for…

— Michel de Montaigne

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

There is no desire more natural than the desire of knowledge. (Il n'est desir plus naturel que le desir de connaissance)

— Michel de Montaigne

Nature clasps all her creatures in a universal embrace; there is not one of them which she has not plainly furnished with…

— Michel de Montaigne

Natural inclinations are assisted and reinforced by education, but they are hardly ever altered or overcome.

— Michel de Montaigne

But sure there is need of other remedies than dreaming, a weak contention of art against nature.

— Michel de Montaigne

The world is but a perennial movement. All things in it are in constant motion-the earth, the rocks of the Caucasus, the…

— Michel de Montaigne

Examples teach us that in military affairs, and all others of a like nature, study is apt to enervate and relax the…

— Michel de Montaigne

We hold death, poverty, and grief for our principal enemies; but this death, which some repute the most dreadful of all dreadful…

— Michel de Montaigne

“Had I been placed among those nations which are said to live still in the sweet freedom of nature's first laws, I…

— Michel de Montaigne

Nature has with a Motherly Tenderness observed this, that the Action she has enjoyned us for our Necessity should be also pleasant…

— Michel de Montaigne

I cruelly hate cruelty, both by nature and reason, as the worst of all the vices. But then I am so soft…

— Michel de Montaigne

It is an injustice that an old, broken, half-dead father should enjoy alone, in a corner of his hearth, possessions that would…

— Michel de Montaigne

Old age is a lease nature only signs as a particular favor, and it may be, to one, only in the space…

— Michel de Montaigne

“Compare with such a one the common rabble of mankind, stupid and mean-spirited, servile, instable, and continually floating with the tempest of…

— Michel de Montaigne

Men do not know the natural infirmity of their mind: it does nothing but ferret and quest, and keeps incessantly whirling around,…

— Michel de Montaigne

“I have no other passion to keep me in breath. What avarice, ambition, quarrels, law suits do for others who, like me,…

— Michel de Montaigne

“Let us give Nature a chance; she knows her business better than we do.”

— Michel de Montaigne

The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from Custom.

— Michel de Montaigne

If I were of the trade, I should naturalize art as much as they "artialize" nature.

— Michel de Montaigne

Let us permit nature to have her way. She understands her business better than we do.

— Michel de Montaigne

Nature has, herself, I fear, imprinted in man a kind of instinct to inhumanity.

— Michel de Montaigne

There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge.

— Michel de Montaigne

Let us a little permit nature to take her own way; she better understands her own affairs than we.

— Michel de Montaigne

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

— Michel de Montaigne

Covetousness is both the beginning and the end of the devil's alphabet - the first vice in corrupt nature that moves, and…

— Michel de Montaigne