Quotes By Author: Michel de Montaigne
“[Marriage] happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.”
-
“Did I know myself less, I might perhaps venture to handle something or other to the bottom, and to be deceived in my own inability; but sprinkling here one word and there another, patterns cut from severalpieces and scattered without design and without engaging myself too far, I am not responsible for them, or obliged to keep close to my subject, without varying at my own liberty and pleasure, and giving up myself to doubt and uncertainty, and to myown governing method, ignorance.”
“…were these Essays of mine considerable enough to deserve a critical judgment, it might then, I think, fallout that they would not much take with common and vulgar capacities, nor be very acceptable to the singular and excellent sort of men; the first would not understand them enough, and the last too much; and so they may hover in the middle region.”
“The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use; some men have lived long, and lived little; attend to it while you are in it. It lies in your will, not in the number of years, for you to have lived enough.”
“All is a-swarm with commentaries: of authors there is a dearth.”
“Every other knowledge is harmful to him who does not have knowledge of goodness.”
“We must not attach knowledge to the mind, we have to incorporate it there.”
“Judgement can do without knowledge: but not knowledge without judgement.”
“Livet består av en del galskap, og en del visdom; den som bare skriver ærbødig og konvensjonelt, utelater mer enn halvparten.”
“Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre of sentiment and resolution, in the suffering of human accidents.”
“It is a disaster that wisdom forbids you to be satisfied with yourself and always sends you away dissatisfied and fearful, whereas stubbornness and foolhardiness fill their hosts with joy and assurance.”
“Why do people respect the package rather than the man?”
“The greater part of the world’s troubles are due to questions of grammar.”
“There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.”