Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Michel de Montaigne (French Essayist)

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533–92) was a French essayist. Regarded as the creator and one of the great masters of the essay form, Montaigne wrote about important personalities and ideas of his age in his Skeptical Essais (1572–80, 1588; Essays, 1603.)

Born into a family of wealthy merchants near Bordeaux, Montaigne spoke no language but Latin until he was six. He studied law and served as a magistrate and mayor of Bordeaux, and engaged in diplomacy during the French religious civil wars.

In 1570, Montaigne renounced his civic responsibilities to devote himself to the administration of his estate and to write. He called his short works ‘essais,’ or ‘attempts’—they deal with an eclectic range of themes. Even though he never considered himself a philosopher, he is now seen as one of the most outstanding Sceptical thinkers of early modern Europe; his philosophical standpoint was broadly an argument for introspection.

Montaigne published three books of essays; a fourth appeared posthumously in 1595. His approachable style, intelligence, and subtle thought have made him one of the most widely admired writers of the Renaissance. His essays greatly influenced French and English literature.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Michel de Montaigne

If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.
—Michel de Montaigne
Topics: Love, Friendship

Know thyself and do thine own work, says Plato; and each includes the other and covers the whole duty of man.
—Michel de Montaigne
Topics: Duty

He who should teach men to die, would, at the same time, teach them to live.
—Michel de Montaigne
Topics: Death

Necessity is a violent school-mistress.
—Michel de Montaigne
Topics: Necessity

I am further of opinion that it would be better for us to have (no laws) at all than to have them in so prodigious numbers as we have.
—Michel de Montaigne
Topics: Justice

Let Nature have her way; she understands her business better than we do.
—Michel de Montaigne
Topics: Nature

I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided if greater pains be the consequence, and pains to be coveted that will terminate in greater pleasures.
—Michel de Montaigne
Topics: Pleasure

A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.
—Michel de Montaigne

I don’t break the law* made for crooks, when I take away my own property – thus I am not obliged to conform to the law made for murderers when I deprive myself of my own life.
—Michel de Montaigne
Topics: Suicide

The secret of success in life is known only to those who have not succeeded.
—Michel de Montaigne
Topics: Success

The memory represents to us not what we choose but what it pleases.
—Michel de Montaigne
Topics: Memory

Of all the infirmities we have, the most savage is to despise our being.
—Michel de Montaigne
Topics: Confidence, Awareness, Acceptance, Realization, Self-Pity

He that first likened glory to a shadow, did better than he was aware of; they are both vain.—Glory, also, like the shadow, goes sometimes before the body, and sometimes in length infinitely exceeds it.
—Michel de Montaigne
Topics: Glory

When I religiously confess myself to myself, I find that the best virtue I have has in it some tincture of vice.
—Michel de Montaigne
Topics: Vice

True it is that she who escapeth safe and unpolluted from out the school of freedom, giveth more confidence of herself than she who comet sound out of the school of severity and restraint.
—Michel de Montaigne
Topics: Confidence

An honest man is not accountable for the vice and folly of his trade, and therefore ought not to refuse the exercise of it. It is the custom of his country, and there is profit in it. We must live by the world, and such as we find it, so make use of it.
—Michel de Montaigne
Topics: Honesty

The thing in the world I am most afraid of is fear.
—Michel de Montaigne
Topics: Fear

There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.
—Michel de Montaigne
Topics: Communication

Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.
—Michel de Montaigne
Topics: Satisfaction

He who is not very strong in memory should not meddle with lying.
—Michel de Montaigne
Topics: Lying, Memories, Deception/Lying, Lies

My library is my kingdom, and here I try to make my rule absolute-shutting off this single nook from wife, daughter and society. Elsewhere I have only a verbal authority, and vague. Unhappy is the man, in my opinion, who has no spot at home where he can be at home to himself-to court himself and hide away.
—Michel de Montaigne
Topics: Self-Discovery

Experience has taught me this, that we undo ourselves by impatience. Misfortunes have their life and their limits, their sickness and their health.
—Michel de Montaigne
Topics: Patience, Resilience

The finest lives, in my opinion, are those who rank in the common model, and with the human race, but without miracle, without extravagance.
—Michel de Montaigne

Presumption is our natural and original malady. When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime to her more than she is to me.
—Michel de Montaigne
Topics: Expectations, Animals

It is the rule of rules, and the general law of all laws, that every person should observe the fashions of the place where he is.
—Michel de Montaigne
Topics: Fashion

Nature should have been pleased to have made this age miserable, without making it also ridiculous.
—Michel de Montaigne
Topics: Age

The most profound joy has more of gravity than of gaiety in it.
—Michel de Montaigne
Topics: Excitement, Joy

The thing I fear most is fear.
—Michel de Montaigne
Topics: Fear

He that is a friend to himself, know; he is a friend to all.
—Michel de Montaigne
Topics: Friendship

When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime for her more than she is to me?
—Michel de Montaigne
Topics: Cats

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