"The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them... Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will."
"Can anything be imagined so ridiculous that this miserable and wretched creature, who is not so much as master of himself, but subject to the injuries of all things, should call himself master and emperor of the world, of which he has not power to know the least part, much less to command the whole?"
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Source: Michel de Montaigne, William Hazlitt (1860). “The Works of Michael de Montaigne: Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy”, p.231
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"Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul."
"The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself."
"We must learn to endure what we cannot avoid. Our life is composed, like the harmony of the world, of contrary things, also of different tones, sweet and harsh, sharp and flat, soft and loud. If a musician liked only one kind, what would he have to say?"
"A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears."
"My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened."