Life itself is neither a good nor an evil: life is where good or evil find a place, depending on how you… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
Philosophical discussions habitually make men happy and joyful not frowning and sad. — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
If you want it to be so, history can be a waste of time; it can also be, if you want it… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
Since philosophy is the art which teaches us how to live, and since children need to learn it as much as we… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
Teach him a certain refinement in sorting out and selecting his arguments, with an affection for relevance and so for brevity. Above… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
In his commerce with men I mean him to include- and that principally- those who live only in the memory of books.… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share Image
'As a man who knows how to make his education into a rule of life not a means of showing off; who… — 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
As for our pupils talk, let his virtue and his sense of right and wrong shine through it and have no guide but reason. Make him understand that confessing an error which he discovers in his own argument even when he alone has noticed it is an act of justice and integrity, which are the main qualities he pursues; stubbornness… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share
Their pupils and their little charges are not nourished and fed by what they learn: the learning is passed from hand to hand with only one end in view: to show it off, to put into our accounts to entertain others with it, as though it were merely counters, useful for totting up and producing statements, but having no other… — Michel de Montaigne Copy Share
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