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Michel De Montaigne Quotes
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Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, Lord of Montaigne was one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance, known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. His work is noted for its merging of casual anecdotes and autobiography with serious intellectual insight; his massive volume Essais contains some of the most influential essays ever written.

Montaigne had a direct influence on Western writers, including Francis Bacon, René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Albert Hirschman, William Hazlitt, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friedrich Nietzsche, Stefan Zweig, Eric Hoffer, Isaac Asimov, and possibly on the later works of William Shakespeare.

In his own lifetime, Montaigne was admired more as a statesman than as an author. The tendency in his essays to digress into anecdotes and personal ruminations was seen as detrimental to proper style rather than as an innovation, and his declaration that, "I am myself the matter of my book", was viewed by his contemporaries as self-indulgent. In time, however, Montaigne would come to be recognized as embodying, perhaps better than any other author of his time, the spirit of freely entertaining doubt which began to emerge at that time. He is most famously known for his skeptical remark, "Que sçay-je?" .

Remarkably modern even to readers today, Montaigne's attempt to examine the world through the lens of the only thing he can depend on implicitly—his own judgment—makes him more accessible to modern readers than any other author of the Renaissance. Much of modern literary non-fiction has found inspiration in Montaigne and writers of all kinds continue to read him for his masterful balance of intellectual knowledge and personal storytelling.

✵ 28. February 1533 – 13. September 1592
Michel De Montaigne photo
Michel De Montaigne: 264 quotes14 likes

Michel De Montaigne Quotes

“Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.”

Michel De Montaigne

Book II, Ch. 17
Attributed

“Saying is one thing and doing is another.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 31
Essais (1595), Book II

“We trouble our life by thoughts about death, and our death by thoughts about life.”

Michel De Montaigne

Source: The Essays: A Selection

“Other people do not see you at all, but guess at you by uncertain conjectures.”

Michel De Montaigne

Source: The Complete Essays

“It is a disaster that wisdom forbids you to be satisfied with yourself and always sends you away dissatisfied and fearful, whereas stubbornness and foolhardiness fill their hosts with joy and assurance.”

Michel De Montaigne

Source: The Complete Essays

“The thing I fear most is fear.”

Michel De Montaigne

C'est de quoi j'ai le plus de peur que la peur.
Book I, ch, 18
Essais (1595), Book I
Source: The Complete Essays

“Judgement can do without knowledge: but not knowledge without judgement.”

Michel De Montaigne

Source: The Complete Essays

“Valor is strength, not of legs and arms, but of heart and soul; it consists not in the worth of our horse or our weapons, but in our own.”

Michel De Montaigne

Source: Cannibales

“Life itself is neither a good nor an evil: life is where good or evil find a place, depending on how you make it for them.”

Michel De Montaigne

Source: The Essays: A Selection

“I had rather fashion my mind than furnish it.”

Michel De Montaigne

“I want us to be doing things, prolonging life's duties as much as we can. I want death to find me planting my cabbages, neither worrying about it nor the unfinished gardening.”

Michel De Montaigne

“The finest souls are those that have the most variety and suppleness.”

Michel De Montaigne

Source: The Complete Essays

“To distract myself from tiresome thoughts, I have only to resort to books; they easily draw my mind to themselves and away from other things.”

Michel De Montaigne

“Kings and philosophers defecate, and so do ladies.”

Michel De Montaigne

Variant: Kings and philosophers shit—and so do ladies.

“Let every foot have its own shoe.”

Michel De Montaigne

Source: The Essays: A Selection

“Pride and curiosity are the two scourges of our souls. The latter prompts us to poke our noses into everything, and the former forbids us to leave anything unresolved and undecided.”

Michel De Montaigne

Source: The Essays: A Selection

“There is no more expensive thing than a free gift.”

Michel De Montaigne

“The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them… Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.”

Michel De Montaigne

Book I, Ch. 20
Attributed

“A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.”

Michel De Montaigne

Book III, Ch. 5
Attributed

“The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mold…The same reason that makes us wrangle with a neighbor creates a war betwixt princes.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 12
Essais (1595), Book II

“Every other knowledge is harmful to him who does not have knowledge of goodness.”

Michel De Montaigne

Book I, Ch. 25
Essais (1595), Book I
Source: The Complete Essays

“Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre of sentiment and resolution, in the suffering of human accidents.”

Michel De Montaigne

Source: The Complete Essays

“A man must be a little mad if he does not want to be even more stupid.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 9
Essais (1595), Book III

“Why may not a goose say thus: "All the parts of the universe I have an interest in: the earth serves me to walk upon, the sun to light me; the stars have their influence upon me; I have such an advantage by the winds and such by the waters; there is nothing that yon heavenly roof looks upon so favourably as me. I am the darling of Nature! Is it not man that keeps and serves me?"”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 12. Apology for Raimond Sebond
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“I will follow the good side right to the fire, but not into it if I can help it.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III (1595), Ch. 1
Essais (1595), Book III

“Man in sooth is a marvellous, vain, fickle, and unstable subject.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book I, Ch. 1. That Men by various Ways arrive at the same End
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“So it is with minds. Unless you keep them busy with some definite subject that will bridle and control them, they throw themselves in disorder hither and yon in the vague field of imagination... And there is no mad or idle fancy that they do no bring forth in the agitation.”

Michel De Montaigne

Attributed

“I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.”

Michel De Montaigne

Book III, Ch. 9
Attributed

“I moreover affirm that our wisdom itself, and wisest consultations, for the most part commit themselves to the conduct of chance.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 8. Of the Art of Conversation
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“We seek and offer ourselves to be gulled.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 11. Of Cripples
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie.”

Michel De Montaigne

Book II, Ch. 17
Attributed

“Live as long as you please, you will strike nothing off the time you will have to spend dead.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book I, Ch. 20
Essais (1595), Book I

“In my opinion, every rich man is a miser.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book I, Ch. 14
Essais (1595), Book I

“To an atheist all writings tend to atheism: he corrupts the most innocent matter with his own venom.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 12
Essais (1595), Book II

“God might grant us riches, honours, life, and even health, to our own hurt; for every thing that is pleasing to us is not always good for us. If he sends us death, or an increase of sickness, instead of a cure, Vvrga tua et baculus, tuus ipsa me consolata sunt. "Thy rod and thy staff have comforted me," he does it by the rule of his providence, which better and more certainly discerns what is proper for us than we can do; and we ought to take it in good part, as coming from a wise and most friendly hand”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 12
Essais (1595), Book II

“There is nothing so easy, so sweet, and so favourable, as the divine law: it calls and invites us to her, guilty and abominable as we are; extends her arms and receives us into her bosom, foul and polluted as we at present are, and are for the future to be. But then, in return, we are to look upon her with a respectful eye; we are to receive this pardon with all gratitude and submission, and for that instant at least, wherein we address ourselves to her, to have the soul sensible of the ills we have committed, and at enmity with those passions that seduced us to offend her;”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Essais (1595), Book I

“The sage says that all that is under heaven incurs the same law and the same fate.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 12
Essais (1595), Book II

“The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book I, Ch. 22. Of Custom
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“He who is not sure of his memory, should not undertake the trade of lying.”

Michel De Montaigne

Book I, Ch. 9
Attributed
Variant: He who is not very strong in memory should not meddle with lying.
Variant: It is not without good reason said, that he who has not a good memory should never take upon him the trade of lying.

“It is more of a job to interpret the interpretations than to interpret the things, and there are more books about books than about any other subject: we do nothing but write glosses about each other.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 13
Essais (1595), Book III

“Like rowers, who advance backward.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 1. Of Profit and Honesty
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“We must not attach knowledge to the mind, we have to incorporate it there.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book I, Ch. 25
Essais (1595), Book I

“She [virtue] requires a rough and stormy passage; she will have either outward difficulties to wrestle with, 11 … or internal difficulties.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 11. Of Cruelty
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“There is no man so good that if he placed all his actions and thoughts under the scrutiny of the laws, he would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Il n'est si homme de bien, qu'il mette à l'examen des loix toutes ses actions et pensées, qui ne soit pendable dix fois en sa vie.
Book III, Ch. 9
Essais (1595), Book III
Variant: 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.