How many condemnations I have witnessed more criminal than the crime!
— Michel de Montaigne
Virtue rejects facility to be her companion. She requires a craggy, rough and thorny way.
Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.
I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics.
There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge.
It is an absolute and virtually divine perfection to know how to enjoy our being rightfully.
It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness. A spirited mind never stops within itself; it is always aspiring and going beyond its strength.
If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.
The soul which has no fixed purpose in life is lost; to be everywhere, is to be nowhere.
Stubborn and ardent clinging to one's opinion is the best proof of stupidity.
A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.
A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself.
There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.
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.
It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.
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.
There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.
No pleasure has any savor for me without communication.
I have often seen people uncivil by too much civility, and tiresome in their courtesy.
A straight oar looks bent in the water. What matters is not merely that we see things but how we see them.
Few men have been admired of their familiars.
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.
Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition.
I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.
Wit is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not how to use it discreetly.
The beautiful souls are they that are universal, open, and ready for all things.
Confidence in others' honesty is no light testimony of one's own integrity.
Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head.
The ceaseless labour of your life is to build the house of death.
Ambition is not a vice of little people.
No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port.
He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.
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.
The thing I fear most is fear.
Any person of honor chooses rather to lose his honor than to lose his conscience.
If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not even think of themselves.
We are Christians by the same title as we are natives of Perigord or Germany.
There is perhaps no more obvious vanity than to write of it so vainly.
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.
It is a monstrous thing that I will say, but I will say it all the same: I find in many things more restraint and order in my morals than in my opinions, and my lust less depraved than my reason.
I speak the truth not so much as I would, but as much as I dare, and I dare a little more as I grow older.
In nine lifetimes, you'll never know as much about your cat as your cat knows about you.
Unless a man feels he has a good enough memory, he should never venture to lie.
The finest souls are those that have the most variety and suppleness.
Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of soul, impossible.
It should be noted that children at play are not playing about; their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity.
If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because it was I.
The world is all a carcass and vanity, The shadow of a shadow, a play And in one word, just nothing.
Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.
Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky.
