Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)

Quotes

• I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself.

• Wise men have more to learn of fools than fools of wise men.

• The art of dining well is no slight art, the pleasure not a slight pleasure.

• A man of understanding has lost nothing, if he has himself.

• Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.

• Even on the most exalted throne in the world we are only sitting on our own bottom.

• Each man calls barbarism what is not his own practice for indeed it seems we have no other test of truth and reason that the example and pattern of the opinions and customs of the country we live in.

• The strongest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.

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

• There is nothing useless in nature; not even uselessness itself.

• whoever saw old age that did not applaud the past and condemn the present?

• Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.

• When I am attacked by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books. They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.

• There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.

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

• Don't discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose; if you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved.

• Even on the highest throne in the world, we are still sitting on our ass.

• I will follow the right side even to the fire, but excluding the fire if I can.

• Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.

• To philosophize is to doubt.