Quotes by Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

"Nature should have been pleased to have made this age miserable, without making it also ridiculous."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on age and aging   

"Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on age and aging
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"There are some defeats more triumphant than victories."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on defeat
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"Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle; but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on discipline   

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on dream   

"We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on education
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"In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page- boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk -- they are all part of the curriculum."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on education
3 fans of this quote   

"Example is a bright looking-glass, universal and for all shapes to look into."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on example   

"All the fame you should look for in life is to have lived it quietly."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on fame
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"There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on family   

"There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on family   

"The thing I fear most is fear."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on fear
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"I know what I am fleeing from, but not what I am in search of."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on fear
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"There is no passion so contagious as that of fear."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on fear   

"Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on fools and foolishness
3 fans of this quote   

"If a man urge me to tell wherefore I loved him, I feel it cannot be expressed but by answering: Because it was he, because it was myself."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on friends and friendship   

"Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words azimuth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on girls   

"Ambition is not a vice of little people."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on ambition   

"When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on amusement
3 fans of this quote   

"No wind favors him who has no destined port."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on goals
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"No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on goals
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"To honor him whom we have made is far from honoring him that hath made us.."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on god   

"It is very easy to accuse a government of imperfection, for all mortal things are full of it."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on government   

"It is not the want, but rather abundance that creates avarice."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on greed   

"Habit is second nature."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on habit   

"The smallest annoyances, disturb us the most."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on happiness   

"I love those historians that are either very simple or most excellent. Such as are between both (which is the most common fashion), it is they that spoil all; they will needs chew our meat for us and take upon them a law to judge, and by consequence to square and incline the story according to their fantasy."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on history and historians   

"My home...It is my retreat and resting place from wars, I try to keep this corner as a haven against the tempest outside, as I do another corner in my soul."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on home   

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on honesty   

"Man is stark mad; he cannot make a flea, and yet he will be making gods by the dozens."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on humankind
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"The weeping of an heir is laughter in disguise."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on inheritance   

"The most profound joy has more of gravity than of gaiety in it."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on joy
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"It is a common seen by experience that excellent memories do often accompany weak judgments."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on judgment and judges   

"We need very strong ears to hear ourselves judged frankly, and because there are few who can endure frank criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to criticize us perform a remarkable act of friendship, for to undertake to wound or offend a man for his own good is to have a healthy love for him."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on judgment and judges
3 fans of this quote   

"I see men ordinarily more eager to discover a reason for things than to find out whether the things are so."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on knowledge   

"It would be better to have no laws at all, than to have too many."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on law and lawyers   

"It should be noted that children's games are not merely games. One should regard them as their most serious activities."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on leisure   

"Who does not in some sort live to others, does not live much to himself."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on lies and lying   

"I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on lies and lying
4 fans of this quote   

"He who is not very strong in memory should not meddle with lying."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on lies and lying