Michel de Montaigne Quotes - Page 31

• For truth itself has not the privilege to be spoken at all times and in all sorts.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Privilege, All Time

  Michel de Montaigne (1850). “Works, Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy: With Notes from All the Commentators, Biographical and Bibliographical Notices &c., &c”, p.525

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• Any time and any place can be used to study: his room, a garden, is table, his bed; when alone or in company; morning and evening. His chief study will be Philosophy, that Former of good judgement and character who is privileged to be concerned with everything.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Morning, Philosophy, Educational

  Michel de Montaigne (1991). “The essays of Michel de Montaigne”, Lane, Allen

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• Teach him a certain refinement in sorting out and selecting his arguments, with an affection for relevance and so for brevity. Above all let him be taught to throw down his arms and surrender to truth as soon as he perceives it, whether the truth is born at his rival's doing or within himself from some change in his ideas.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Educational, Ideas, Words Of Wisdom

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• Man is the sole animal whose nudities offend his own companions, and the only one who, in his natural actions, withdraws and hides himself from his own kind.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Animal, Men, Action

  Michel de Montaigne (1853). “The Works of Michael de Montaigne: Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy. With Notes from All the Commentators, Biographical and Bibliographical Notices &c., &c”, p.222

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• Amongst so many borrowed things, am glad if I can steal one, disguising and altering it for some new service.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Stealing, Plagiarism, Glad

  Michel de Montaigne, William Hazlitt, Orlando Williams Wight (1866). “Works of Michael de Montaigne: Comprising his essays, journey into Italy, and letters”, p.389

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• A learned man is not learned in all things; but a sufficient man is sufficient throughout, even to ignorance itself.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Ignorance, Men, All Things

  Michel de Montaigne (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne (Illustrated)”, p.1044, Delphi Classics

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• For there is no air that men so greedily draw in, that diffuses itself so soon, and that penetrates so deep as that of license.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, Air, Draws

  Michel de Montaigne, Bayle St. John (1866). “Essays [tr. by Cotton”, p.369

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• 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

  Inspirational, Communication, Grieving

  Michel de Montaigne, Antoine JAY (1842). “The Complete Works of Michael de Montaigne; Comprising; the Essays, Translated by Cotton; the Letters; the Journey Into Germany and Italy, Now First Translated; a Life by the Editor; Notes: ... Critical Opinions; ... the Éloges of MM. Jay and Villemain; a”, p.457

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• What we are told of the inhabitants of Brazil, that they never die but of old age, is attributed to the tranquility and serenity of their climate; I rather attribute it to the tranquility and serenity of their souls, which are free from all passion, thought, or any absorbing and unpleasant labors. Those people spend their lives in an admirable simplicity and ignorance, without letters, without law, without king, without any manner of religion.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Kings, Ignorance, Passion

  Michel de Montaigne (1946). “The essays”

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• There is nothing so extreme that is not allowed by the custom of some nation or other.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Extremes, Nations, Customs

  Michel de Montaigne (1853). “The Works of Michael de Montaigne: Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy. With Notes from All the Commentators, Biographical and Bibliographical Notices &c., &c”, p.271

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• He who would teach men to die would teach them to live.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, Teach, Dies

  Essais bk. 1, ch. 20 (1580) See Porteus 2

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• 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.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Education, Book, Giving

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.297, Stanford University Press

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• 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.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Educational, Mind, Lessons

  Michel de Montaigne (1991). “The essays of Michel de Montaigne”, Lane, Allen

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• Our speech has its weaknesses and its defects, like all the rest. Most of the occasions for the troubles of the world are grammatical.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Education, World, Speech

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.392, Stanford University Press

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• Necessity reconciles and brings men together; and this accidental connection afterward forms itself into laws.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, Law, Society

  Michel de Montaigne (2015). “Essays:”, p.17, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• There is the name and the thing; the name is a sound which sets a mark on and denotes the thing. The name is no part of the thing nor of the substance; it is an extraneous piece added to the thing, and outside of it.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Names, Sound, Substance

  Michel de Montaigne (1946). “The essays”

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• The most unhappy and frail creatures are men and yet they are the proudest.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, Unhappy, Frail

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• Everything must not always be said, for that would be folly.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Would Be, Said, Folly

  Michel de Montaigne (1925). “The Essays of Montaigne”

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• How many quarrels, and how important, has the doubt as to the meaning of this syllable "Hoc" produced for the world!

  Michel de Montaigne

  Doubt, Important, World

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• I have seen books made of things neither studied nor ever understood ... the author contenting himself for his own part, to have cast the plot and projected the design of it, and by his industry to have bound up the fagot of unknown provisions; at least the ink and paper his own. This may be said to be a buying or borrowing, and not a making or compiling of a book.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Book, Ink And Paper, Design

  "Essays". Book by Michel de Montaigne, Book III, Chapter XII; in "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" (1922), p. 653-54, 1595.

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• My reason is not framed to bend or stoop: my knees are.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Atheism, Knees, Framed

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• [I]n my country, when they would say a man has no sense, they say, such an one has no memory; and when I complain of the defect of mine, they do not believe me, and reprove me, as though I accused myself for a fool: not discerning the difference betwixt memory and understanding, which is to make matters still worse for me. But they do me wrong; for experience, rather, daily shows us, on the contrary, that a strong memory is commonly coupled with infirm judgment.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Country, Strong, Memories

  Michel de Montaigne (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne (Illustrated)”, p.239, Delphi Classics

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• Nothing else but an insatiate thirst of enjoying a greedily desired object.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Love, Enjoy, Thirst

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• God defend me from being an honest man according to the description which every day I see made by each man to his own glorification

  Michel de Montaigne

  Honesty, Men, Made

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• Fortune does us neither good nor hurt; she only presents us the matter, and the seed, which our soul, more powerfully than she, turns and applies as she best pleases; being the sole cause and sovereign mistress of her own happy or unhappy condition.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Hurt, Soul, Mistress

  Michel de Montaigne, William Hazlitt (1860). “The Works of Michael de Montaigne: Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy”, p.145

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