51 Quotes by Montaigne

Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens.

It is only the fear of death that makes death seem important.

A straight oar looks bent in the water. What matters is not merely that we see things but how we see them.

We need but little learning to live happily.

Retire within yourselves; but first prepare yourselves to receive yourselves there. It would be madness to trust yourselves to yourselves if you do not know how to control yourselves. There are ways of failing in solitude as well as in company.

If I encounter difficulties in reading, I do not gnaw my nails over them; I leave them there. I do nothing without gaiety.

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.

It is a thorny undertaking, and more so than it seems, to follow a movement so wandering as that of our mind, to penetrate the opaque depths of its innermost folds, to pick out and immobilise the innumerable flutterings that agitate it.

Behold the hands, how they promise, conjure, appeal, menace, pray, supplicate, refuse, beckon, interrogate, admire, confess, cringe, instruct, command, mock and what not besides, with a variation and multiplication of variation which makes the tongue envious.