Michel de Montaigne Quotes

No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately.

My life has been filled with terrible misfortune; most of which never happened.

We are all wind throughout.

There is no end to our researches; our end is in the other world.

We wake sleeping, and sleep waking.

Man is quite insane. He wouldn’t know how to make a maggot, and he makes Gods by the dozen.

When I play with my cat, who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me?

Fame and tranquillity are two things that can’t live under the same roof.

The greatest thing in the world is for a man to know that he is his own.

We must reserve a backshop, wholly our own and entirely free, wherein to settle our true liberty, our principle solitude and retreat.

Now the end, I take it, is all one, to live at more leisure and at one’s ease.

I would like death to come to me while I am planting cabbages, caring little for death and even less for the imperfection of my garden.

We should always be booted and spurred, and ready to go.

Man (in good earnest) is a marvellous vain, fickle, and unstable subject.