Michel de Montaigne quotes - page 12

When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her. (Michel de Montaigne)
Confidence in the goodness of another is good proof of one's own goodness. View quote
Michel de Montaigne
A straight oar looks bent in the water. What matters is not merely that we see things but how we see them. View quote
Michel de Montaigne
Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self. View quote
Michel de Montaigne
Tis a good word and a profitable desire, but withal absurd; for to make the handle bigger than the hand, the cubic longer than the arm, and to hope to stride further than our legs can reach, is both impossible and monstrous; or that man should rise above himself and humanity; for he cannot see but with his eyes, nor seize but with his hold. He shall be exalted, if God will lend him an extraordinary hand; he shall exalt himself, by abandoning and renouncing his own proper means, and by suffering himself to be raised and elevated by means purely celestial. It belongs to our Christian faith, and not to the stoical virtue, to pretend to that divine and miraculous metamorphosis. View quote
Michel de Montaigne
In this present that God has made us, there is nothing unworthy our care; we stand accountable for it even to a hair; and is it not a commission to man, to conduct man according to his condition; 'tis express, plain, and the very principal one, and the Creator has seriously and strictly prescribed it to us. Authority has power only to work in regard to matters of common judgment, and is of more weight in a foreign language; therefore let us again charge at it in this place. View quote
Michel de Montaigne
In nine lifetimes, you'll never know as much about your cat as your cat knows about you. View quote
Michel de Montaigne
As soon as women become ours we are no longer theirs. View quote
Michel de Montaigne
I consider myself an average man, except in the fact that I consider myself an average man. View quote
Michel de Montaigne
The shortest way to arrive at glory would be to do that for conscience which we do for glory. View quote
Michel de Montaigne
I am myself the matter of my book. (Michel de Montaigne)
Whether the events in our life are good or bad, greatly depends on the way we perceive them. View quote
Michel de Montaigne
For truly it is to be noted, that children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions. View quote
Michel de Montaigne
I will follow the right side even to the fire, but excluding the fire if I can. View quote
Michel de Montaigne
Each man calls barbarism what is not his own practice for indeed it seems we have no other test of truth and reason that the example and pattern of the opinions and customs of the country we live in. View quote
Michel de Montaigne
I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. View quote
Michel de Montaigne
I see men ordinarily more eager to discover a reason for things than to find out whether the things are so. View quote
Michel de Montaigne
Those who have compared our life to a dream were right... View quote
Michel de Montaigne
I find I am much prouder of the victory I obtain over myself, when, in the very ardor of dispute, I make myself submit to my adversary's force of reason, than I am pleased with the victory I obtain over him through his weakness. View quote
Michel de Montaigne
To call out for the hand of the enemy is a rather extreme measure, yet a better one, I think, than to remain in continual fever over an accident that has no remedy. View quote
Michel de Montaigne
They make me hate things that are likely, when they would impose them upon me as infallible. (Michel de Montaigne)
Great abuses in the world are begotten, or, to speak more boldly, all the abuses of the world are begotten, by our being taught to be afraid of professing our ignorance, and that we are bound to accept all things we are not able to refute. View quote
Michel de Montaigne
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. View quote
Michel de Montaigne
God's justice and His power are inseparable; 'tis in vain we invoke His power in an unjust cause. View quote
Michel de Montaigne
Life itself is neither a good nor an evil: life is where good or evil find a place, depending on how you make it for them. View quote
Michel de Montaigne