Michel de Montaigne — Philosophical Quotes

446 quotes · Philosopher, Writer

Page 12 of 38

Michel de Montaigne Quotes

All Philosophical Wise Angry Love Thoughtful 446 quotes · page 12 of 38

Michel de Montaigne

Philosopher, Writer

Philosophical

“It is very easy to accuse a government of imperfection, for all mortal things are full of it.”

Government Easy Imperfection

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Michel de Montaigne

Philosopher, Writer

Philosophical

“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.”

Law Numbers Justice

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Philosophical

“It has never occurred to me to wish for empire or royalty, nor for the eminence of those high and commanding fortunes. My aim lies not in that direction; I love myself too well.”

Lying Wish I Love Myself

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Philosophical

“Laws gain their authority from actual possession and custom: it is perilous to go back to their origins; laws, like our rivers, get greater and nobler as they roll along: follow them back upstream to their sources and all you find is a tiny spring, hardly recognizable; as time goes by it swells with pride and grows in strength.”

Law Spring Pride

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Philosophical

“To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquillity in our conduct.”

Book Character Winning

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Philosophical

“My errors are by now natural and incorrigible; but the good that worthy men do the public by making themselves imitable, I shall perhaps do by making myself evitable.”

Men Errors Imitation

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Philosophical

“The concern that some women show at the absence of their husbands, does not arise from their not seeing them and being with them, but from their apprehension that their husbands are enjoying pleasures in which they do not participate, and which, from their being at a distance, they have not the power of interrupting.”

Husband Distance Marriage

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Philosophical

“Since philosophy is the art which teaches us how to live, and since children need to learn it as much as we do at other ages, why do we not instruct them in it?”

Children Art Philosophy

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Philosophical

“The first lessons with which we should irrigate his mind should be those which teach him to know himself, and to know how to die ... and to live.”

Mind Educational Lessons

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Philosophical

“I seek in books only to give myself pleasure by honest amusement; or if I study, I seek only the learning that treats of the knowledge of myself and instructs me in how to die well and live well.”

Giving Book Education

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Philosophical

“I may indeed very well happen to contradict myself; but truth, as Demades said, I do not contradict.”

May Said Contradiction

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Philosophical

“Whom conscience, ne'er asleep, Wounds with incessant strokes, not loud, but deep.”

Loud Strokes Incessant

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