Michel Eyquem de Montaigne Quotes

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

"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."

"Perhaps it is not without reason that we attribute facility in belief and conviction to simplicity and ignorance; for it seems to me I once learned that belief was sort of an impression made on our mind, and that the softer it is the less resistant t"

"The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage."

"Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face."

"There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom"

"Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky."

"I love those historians that are either very simple or most excellent. Such as are between both (which is the most common fashion), it is they that spoil all; they will needs chew our meat for us and take upon them a law to judge, and by consequence to square and incline the story according to their fantasy."

"No man is so exquisitely honest or upright in living, but that ten times in his life he might not lawfully be hanged."

"Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of soul, impossible."

"How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables."

"Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul."

"In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page- boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk -- they are all part of the curriculum."

"A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself."

"Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition."

"There is a sort of gratification in doing good which makes us rejoice in ourselves."

"Wit is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not how to use it discreetly."

"The entire lower world was created in the likeness of the higher world. All that exists in the higher world appears like an image in this lower world; yet all this is but One."

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

"Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head"