"Our religion is made to eradicate vices, instead it encourages them, covers them, and nurtures them."
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Quote collection
Michel de Montaigne quotes (page 42 of 49)
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"We have power over nothing except our will."
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"After they had accustomed themselves at Rome to the spectacles of the slaughter of animals, they proceeded to those of the slaughter of men, to the gladiators."
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"He was doubtless an understanding Fellow that said, there was no happy Marriage but betwixt a blind Wife and a deaf Husband."
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"We find ourselves more taken with the running up and down, the games, and puerile simplicities of our children, than we do, afterward, with their most complete actions; as if we had loved them for our sport, like monkeys, and not as men."
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"An ancient father says that a dog we know is better company than a man whose language we do not understand."
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"Men do not know the natural infirmity of their mind: it does nothing but ferret and quest, and keeps incessantly whirling around, building up and becoming entangled in its own work, like silkworms, and is suffocated in it. A mouse in a pitch barrel...thinks it notices from a distance some sort of glimmer of imaginary light and truth; but while running toward it, it is crossed by so many difficulties and obstacles, and diverted by so many new quests, that it strays from the road, bewildered."
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"Nor is it enough to toughen up his soul; you must also toughen up his muscles."
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"Nobody is exempt from saying stupid things, the harm is to do it presumptuously."
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"I have seen books made of things neither studied nor ever understood ... the author contenting himself for his own part, to have cast the plot and projected the design of it, and by his industry to have bound up the fagot of unknown provisions; at least the ink and paper his own. This may be said to be a buying or borrowing, and not a making or compiling of a book."
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"The diversity of physical arguments and opinions embraces all sorts of methods."
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"It is the part of cowardice, not of courage, to go and crouch in a hole under a massive tomb, to avoid the blows of fortune."
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"Those who give the first shock to a state are the first overwhelmed in its ruin; the fruits of public commotion are seldom enjoyed by him who was the first mover; he only beats the water for another's net."
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"Give me the provisions and whole apparatus of a kitchen, and I would starve."
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"How many valiant men we have seen to survive their own reputation!"
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"We should be similarly wary of accepting common opinions; we should judge them by the ways of reason not by popular vote."
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"There is no course of life so weak and sottish as that which is managed by order, method, and discipline."
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"The smallest annoyances, disturb us the most."
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"For among other things he had been counseled to bring me to love knowledge and duty by my own choice, without forcing my will, and to educate my soul entirely through gentleness and freedom."
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"It is easier to write an indifferent poem than to understand a good one."
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