Michel de Montaigne Quotes About Duty

Quotes about: Duty

• To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquility in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately. All other things, ruling, hoarding, building, are only little appendages and props, at most.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Book, Character, Winning

  Michel de Montaigne (1948). “Selections from the essays of Michel Eyquem de Montaigne”

• There is, nevertheless, a certain respect and a general duty of humanity that ties us, not only to beasts that have life and sense, but even to trees and plants.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Respect, Ties, Tree

  Michel de Montaigne, Bayle St. John (1866). “Essays [tr. by Cotton”, p.115

• For among other things he had been counseled to bring me to love knowledge and duty by my own choice, without forcing my will, and to educate my soul entirely through gentleness and freedom.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Educational, Choices, Soul

• There is a certain consideration, and a general duty of humanity, that binds us not only to the animals, which have life and feeling, but even to the trees and plants. We owe justice to people, and kindness and benevolence to all other creatures who may be susceptible of it. There is some intercourse between them and us, and some mutual obligation.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Nature, Kindness, Animal

• We cannot be held to what is beyond our strength and means; for at times the accomplishment and execution may not be in our power, and indeed there is nothing really in our own power except the will: on this are necessarily based and founded all the principles that regulate the duty of man.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Mean, Men, Principles

• 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.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Book, Character, Winning

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.14, Stanford University Press

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