A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.
Michel de Montaigne

A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.
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.
Michel de Montaigne

A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself.
Michel de Montaigne

A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can.
Michel de Montaigne

Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.
Michel de Montaigne

Ambition is not a vice of little people.
Michel de Montaigne

An untempted woman cannot boast of her chastity.
Michel de Montaigne

Any person of honor chooses rather to lose his honor than to lose his conscience.
Michel de Montaigne

Confidence in others' honesty is no light testimony of one's own integrity.
Michel de Montaigne


Confidence in the goodness of another is good proof of one's own goodness.
Michel de Montaigne

Covetousness is both the beginning and the end of the devil's alphabet - the first vice in corrupt nature that moves, and the last which dies.
Michel de Montaigne

Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.
Michel de Montaigne

Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words azimuth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.
Michel de Montaigne

Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition.
Michel de Montaigne

Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.
Michel de Montaigne

Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows.
Michel de Montaigne

Few men have been admired of their familiars.
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.
Michel de Montaigne

Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky.
Michel de Montaigne