Michel Eyquem De Montaigne Quotes

French essayist Michel Eyquem de Montaigne wrote, “The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them; a man may live long yet live very little.” The truth is that you can spend your life any way you want, but you can spend it only once.

A man is not hurt so much by what happens, as by his opinion of what happens.

Better to be tentative than to be recklessly sure- to be an apprentice at sixty, than to present oneself as a doctor at ten.

Get a purge for your brain. It will do better than for your stomach. —Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

He who fears he will suffer, already suffers because of his fear.

Gekkenhuizen worden gebouwd om mensen die er niet opgesloten zitten te laten geloven dat ze nog bij hun verstand zijn. (Michel Eyquem de Montaigne)

I once took pleasure some place in seeing men, through piety, take a vow of ignorance, as of chastity, poverty, penitence. It is also castrating our disorderly appetites, to blunt that cupidity that pricks us on to the study of books, and to deprive the soul of that voluptuous complacency which tickles us with the notion of being learned.

French essayist Michel Eyquem de Montaigne wrote, “The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them; a man may live long yet live very little.

It is not without good reason said, that he who has not good memory should never take upon him the trade of lying

I felt compassion for the poor people who were taken in by [supernatural] follies. And now I think that I was at least as much to be pitied myself. Not that experience has since shown me anything surpassing my first beliefs, and that through no fault of my curiosity; but reason has taught me to condemn a thing thus, dogmatically, as false and impossible, is to assume the distinction of knowing the bounds and limits of God's will and of the power of our mother Nature; and that there is no more notable folly in the world than to measure these things by our capacity and competence. If we call prodigies or miracles whatever our reason cannot reach, how many of these appear continually before our eyes! Let us consider through what clouds and how gropingly we are led to the knowledge of most of the things that are right in our hands; assuredly we shall find that it is rather familiarity than knowledge that takes away their strangeness.

«No sin una buena razón se dice que quien no tiene buena memoria debería abstenerse de mentir.» Esto lo dijo Michel Eyquem de Montaigne,

When I play with my cat, who knows but that she regards me more as a plaything than I do her? —MICHEL EYQUEM DE MONTAIGNE