“A man with nothing to lend should refrain from borrowing.”

“When I am playing with my cat, who knows whether she have more sport in dallying with me than I have in gaming with her?”

“We take our fetters with us; our freedom is not total: we still turn our gaze towards the things we have left behind; our imagination is full of them.”

“Ambition is not a vice of little people. ”

“There is hardly less torment in running a family than in running a country.”

“Though the ancient poet in Plutarch tells us we must not trouble the gods with our affairs because they take no heed of our angers and disputes, we can never enough decry the disorderly sallies of our minds.”

“To censure my own faults in some other person seems to me no more incongruous than to censure, as I often do, another's in myself. They must be denounced everywhere, and be allowed no place of sanctuary.”

“for this present child of my brain, what I give it I give unconditionally and irrevocably, just as one does to the children of one’s body; such little good as I have already done it is no longer mine to dispose of; it may know plenty of things which I know no longer, and remember things about me that I have forgotten; if the need arose to turn to it for help, it would be like borrowing from a stranger. It is richer than I am, yet I am wiser than it. Few devotees of poetry would not have”

“All is a-swarm with commentaries; of authors there is a dearth.”

“Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul”

“All passions that allow themselves to be savored and digested are only mediocre."

“And in this we must for the most part entertain ourselves with ourselves, and so privately that no exotic knowledge or communication be admitted there; there to laugh and to talk, as if without wife, children, goods, train, or attendance, to the end that when it shall so fall out that we must lose any or all of these, it may be no new thing to be without them. We have a mind pliable in itself; that will be company; that has wherewithal to attack and to defend, to receive and to give: let us not then fear in this solitude to languish under an uncomfortable vacuity.”

“In the year of Christ 1571, at the age of thirty-eight, on the last day of February, anniversary of his birth, Michel de Montaigne, lon weary of the servitude of the court and of public employments, while still entire, retired to the bosom of the learned Virgins [Muses], where in calm and freedom from all cares he will spend what little remains of his life now more than half run out. If the fates permit, he will completethis abode, this sweet ancestral retreat; and he has consecrated it to his freedom, tranquility, and leisure.”

“is only certain that there is nothing certain, and that nothing is more miserable or more proud than man."Nat. Hist., ii. 7.]”

“there is nothing we can do longer than think, no activity to which we can devote ourselves more regularly nor more easily:”

“If others were to look attentively into themselves as I do, they would find themselves, as I do, full of emptiness and tomfoolery. I cannot rid myself of them without getting rid of myself. We are all steeped in them, each as much as the other; but those who realize this get off, as I know, a little more cheaply.

“an outstanding memory is often associated with weak judgement.”

“they judge my affection by my memory and turn a natural defect into a deliberate one. ‘We begged him to do this,’ they say, ‘and he has forgotten.’ ‘He has forgotten his promise.’ ‘He has forgotten his friends.’ ‘He never remembered – even for my sake – to say this, to do that or not to mention something else.”

“For in truth habit is a violent and treacherous schoolmistress. She establishes in us, little by little, stealthily, the foothold of her authority; but having by this mild and humble beginning settled and planted it with the help of time, she soon uncovers to us a furious and tyrannical face against which we no longer have the liberty of even raising our eyes.”

“graces were never yet given to any one man."A verse”

“…what privilege this filthy excrement had, that we must carry about us a fine handkerchief to receive it, and, which was more, afterward to lap it carefully up and carry it all day about in our pockets, which, he said, could not but be much more nauseous and offensive, than to see it thrown away, as we did all other evacuations” – A gentleman”

“Man is indeed an object miraculously vain, various and wavering. It is difficult to found a judgement on him which is steady and uniform.”

“I seek only the learning that treats of the knowledge of myself and instructs me how to die well and live well.”

“I speak the truth not so much as I want, but as much as I dare, and I dare a little more as I grow older.”

“Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the mind as the wish to forget it.”

“Atheism being a proposition as unnatural as monstrous, difficult also and hard to establish in the human understanding, how arrogant soever, there are men enough seen, out of vanity and pride, to be the authors of extraordinary and reforming opinions, and outwardly to affect the profession of them; who, if they are such fools, have, nevertheless, not the power to plant them in their own conscience.”

“I...think it much more supportable to be always alone, than never to be so.”

“If I can, I will prevent my death from saying anything not first said by my life.”

“To hear men talk of metonomies, metaphors, and allegories, and other grammar words, would not one think they signified some rare and exotic form of speaking? And yet they are phrases that come near to the babble of my chambermaid. And”

“The other two are rich and noble; examples of virtue rarely make their home among people like that.”

“Most of Aesop’s fables have many different levels and meanings. There are those who make myths of them by choosing some feature that fits in well with the fable. But for most of the fables this is only the first and most superficial aspect. There are others that are more vital, more essential and profound, that they have not been able to reach.”

“That father may truly be said miserable that holdeth the affection of his children tied unto him by no other means than by the need they have of his help or want of his assistance,”

“of countering it if that had been the only factor, since all non-rational inborn tendencies are a kind of disease which ought to be fought against.”

“I would rather let affairs break their neck than twist my faith for the sake of them.”

“It is quite normal to see good intentions, when not carried out with moderation, urging men to actions which are truly vicious.”

“the property of Man’s wit to act readily and quickly, while the property of the judgement is to be slow and poised.”

“To die of age is a rare, singular, and extraordinary death,”

“have seen no other effects in rods but to make children’s minds more remiss or more maliciously headstrong.”

“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to live to yourself.”

“No passion disturbs the soundness of our judgement as anger does.”

“Most of our desires are born and nurtured at other people's expense.”

“If the original essence of the thing which we fear could confidently lodge itself within us by its own authority it would be the same in all men. For all men are of the same species and, in varying degrees, are all furnished with the same conceptual tools and instruments of judgement.”

“In marriage, alliances and money rightly weigh at least as much as attractiveness and beauty.”

“I had rather my son should learn in a tan-house to speak, than in the schools to prate.”

“So much din from so many philosophical brainboxes! Trust in your philosophy now! Boast that you are the one who has found the lucky bean in your festive pudding!”

“That philosopher who orders us to conceal ourselves and to care for no one but ourselves and who wishes us to remain unknown to others, wants us even less to be held in honour and glory by them. He also advised Idomeneus in no wise to govern his actions by reputation or by common opinion, except to avoid such incidental disadvantages as the contempt of men might bring him.10 Those words are infinitely true, in my opinion, and are reasonable.”

“All of the days go toward death and the last one arrives there.”

“No one suffers long, save by his own fault. If a man has no heart for either living or dying; if he has no will either to resist or to run away: what are we to do with him?”

“One may be humble out of pride.”

“Men are most apt to believe what they least understand.”