Quotes
Quotes - Montaigne
It should be noted that the games of children are not games, and must be considered as their most serious actions.
There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.
Those that will combat use and custom by the strict rules of grammar do but jest.
Arts and sciences are not cast in a mould, but are found and perfected by degrees, by often handling and polishing, as bears leisurely lick their clubs into shape.
"Oh! what a vile and abject thing is man unless he can erect himself above humanity." Here is a bon mot and a useful desire, but equally absurd. For to make the handful bigger than the hand, the armful bigger then the arm, and to hope to stride further than the stretch of our legs, is impossible and monstrous. . . . He may lift himself if God lend him His hand of special grace; he may lift himself . . . by means wholly celestial. It is for our Christian religion, and not for his Stoic virtue, to pretend to this divine and miraculous metamorphosis.
One may be humble out of pride.
One may be humble out of pride.
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.
We can be Knowledgeable with other men's knowledge, but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.
A wise man loses nothing, if he but save himself.
If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.
Adrian, the Emperor, exclaimed incessantly, when dying, "That the crowd of physicians had killed him."
How the Doctor's brow should smile, Crown'd with wreaths of camomile.
Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.
He who is not very strong in memory should not meddle with lying.
The memory represents to us not what we choose but what it pleases.
Experience teaches that a strong memory is generally joined to a weak judgment.
There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.
There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.
Necessity is a violent school-mistress. [Fr., C'est une violente maistresse d'eschole que la necessite.]
No one is exempt from taking nonsense; the misfortune is to do it solemnly.
There never was in the world two opinions alike, no more that two hairs, or two grains; the most universal quality is diversity. - Michael Eyquen de Montaigne,
Even opinion is of force enough to make itself to be espoused at the expense of life.
The bees pillage the flowers here and there but they make honey of them which is all their own; it is no longer thyme or marjolaine: so the pieces borrowed from others he will transform and mix up into a work all his own. [Fr., Les abeilles pillotent deca dela les fleurs; mais elles en font aprez le miel, qui est tout leur; ce n'est plus thym, ny marjolaine: ainsi les pieces empruntees d'aultruy, il les transformera et confondra pour en faire un ouvrage tout sien.]
Amongst so many borrowed things, am glad if I can steal one, disguising and altering it for some new service.
