1,152 Quotes by Michel de Montaigne

The man who thinks he knows does not yet know what knowing is.

Aesop, that great man, saw his master making water as he walked. “What!” he said, “Must we void ourselves as we run?” Use our timeas best we may, yet a great part of it will still be idly and ill spent.

Children’s playthings are not sports and should be deemed as their most serious actions.

I know that the arms of friendship are long enough to reach from the one end of the world to the other.

Saying is one thing and doing is another.

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.

It is a human tendency “to measure truth and error by our capacity.”

The Emperor Conrad III had besieged Guelph, Duke of Bavaria; no matter how base and cowardly were the satisfactions offered him, the most generous condition he would vouchsafe was to allow the noblewomen who had been besieged with the Duke to come out honourably on foot, together with whatever they could carry on their persons. They, with greatness of heart, decided to carry out on their shoulders their husbands, their children and the Duke himself.

Every one is well or ill at ease, according as he finds himself! not he whom the world believes, but he who believes himself to be so, is content; and in him alone belief gives itself being and reality.