"There is perhaps no more obvious vanity than to write of it so vainly."
Read quote
7 likes
Quote collection
Michel de Montaigne quotes (page 13 of 49)
979 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"How many condemnations I have witnessed more criminal than the crime!"
Read quote
7 likes
"I have seen people rude by being over-polite."
Read quote
7 likes
"Vexations may be petty, but they are vexations still."
Read quote
7 likes
"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."
Read quote
7 likes
"I set forth a humble and inglorious life; that does not matter. You can tie up all moral philosophy with a common and private life just as well as with a life of richer stuff. Each man bears the entire form of man's estate."
Read quote
7 likes
"Now, since our condition accommodates things to itself, and transforms them according to itself, we no longer know things in their reality; for nothing comes to us that is not altered and falsified by our Senses. When the compass, the square, and the rule are untrue, all the calculations drawn from them, all the buildings erected by their measure, are of necessity also defective and out of plumb. The uncertainty of our senses renders uncertain everything that they produce."
Read quote
7 likes
"Other passions have objects to flatter them, and seem to content and satisfy them for a while; there is power in ambition, pleasure in luxury, and pelf in covetousness; but envy can gain nothing but vexation."
Read quote
7 likes
"It is no hard matter to get children; but after they are born, then begins the trouble, solicitude, and care rightly to train, principle, and bring them up."
Read quote
7 likes
"It is not without good reason, that he who has not a good memory should never take upon him the trade of lying."
Read quote
7 likes
"Since philosophy is the art which teaches us how to live, and since children need to learn it as much as we do at other ages, why do we not instruct them in it? .. But in truth I know nothing about the philosophy of education except this: that the greatest and the most important difficulty known to human learning seems to lie in that area which treats how to bring up children and how to educate them."
Read quote
7 likes
"'Tis the sharpness of our mind that gives the edge to our pains and pleasures."
Read quote
7 likes
"I put forward formless and unresolved notions, as do those who publish doubtful questions to debate in the schools, not to establish the truth but to seek it."
Read quote
7 likes
"Men are tormented by the opinions they have of things, and not the things themselves."
Read quote
7 likes
"I would rather be old for a shorter time than be old before my time."
Read quote
7 likes
"The wise man lives as long as he ought, not so long as he can."
Read quote
6 likes
"We find our energies are actually cramped when we are overanxious to succeed."
Read quote
6 likes
"To philosophize is nothing else than to prepare oneself for death."
Read quote
6 likes
"No one but yourself knows whether you are cowardly and cruel, or loyal and devout; others do not see you; they surmise you by uncertain conjectures; they perceive not so much your nature as your art."
Read quote
6 likes
"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."
Read quote
6 likes