The Complete Essays Quotes

“On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“I quote others only to better express myself.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“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.”
― Michel de Montaigne, Les Essais

“Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“If I speak of myself in different ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind for it.”
― Michel de Montaigne, Montaigne: Essays

“I am afraid that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, and that we have more curiosity than understanding. We grasp at everything, but catch nothing except wind.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“The greater part of the world's troubles are due to questions of grammar.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“Let us give Nature a chance; she knows her business better than we do.”
― Michel de Montaigne, Montaigne: Essays

“[Marriage] happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“I do not believe, from what I have been told about this people, that there is anything barbarous or savage about them, except that we all call barbarous anything that is contrary to our own habits.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“Off I go, rummaging about in books for sayings which please me.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“Why do people respect the package rather than the man?”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“There is no desire more natural than the desire of knowledge. (Il n'est desir plus naturel que le desir de connaissance)”
― Michel de Montaigne, Montaigne: Essays

“Every movement reveals us.”
― Michel de Montaigne, 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, The Complete Essays

“Other people do not see you at all, but guess at you by uncertain conjectures.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“Judgement can do without knowledge: but not knowledge without judgement.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“The thing I fear most is fear.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“No wind favors he who has no destined port.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“The finest souls are those that have the most variety and suppleness.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“Certainly, if he still has himself, a man of understanding has lost nothing.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“I had rather complain of ill-fortune than be ashamed of victory.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre of sentiment and resolution, in the suffering of human accidents.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“Such as are in immediate fear of a losing their estates, of banishment, or of slavery, live in perpetual anguish, and lose all appetite and repose; whereas such as are actually poor, slaves, or exiles, ofttimes live as merrily as other folk.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“Our zeal works wonders, whenever it supports our inclination toward hatred, cruelty, ambition.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use; some men have lived long, and lived little; attend to it while you are in it. It lies in your will, not in the number of years, for you to have lived enough.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“All we do is to look after the opinions and learning of others: we ought to make them our own.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays