Michel de Montaigne

This emperor was arbiter of the whole world at nineteen, and yet would have a man to be thirty before he could be fit to determine a dispute about a gutter.

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.

What a prodigious conscience must that be that can be at quiet within itself whilst it harbors under thesame roof, with so agreeing and so calm a society, both the crime and the judge?

Experience has taught me this, that we undo ourselves by impatience. Misfortunes have their life and their limits, their sickness and their health.

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

A man with nothing to lend should refrain from borrowing.

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

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.

Pride and curiosity are the two scourges of our souls. The latter prompts us to poke our noses into everything, and the former forbids us to leave anything unresolved and undecided.

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__ force of reason, than I am pleased with the victory I obtain over him through his weakness.

Plato forbids children wine till eighteen years of age, and to get drunk till forty; but, after forty, gives them leave to please themselves, and to mix a little liberally in their feasts the influence of Dionysos, that good deity who restores to younger men their gaiety and to old men their youth...fit to inspire old men with mettle to divert themselves in dancing and music; things of great use, and that they dare not attempt when sober.

Had I been placed among those nations which are said to live still in the sweet freedom of nature's first laws, I assure you I should very gladly have portrayed myself here entire and wholly naked.Thus, reader, I am myself the matter of my book; you would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so frivolous and vain a subject.

We can be knowledgeable with another man's knowledge, but we can't be wise with another man's wisdom.

A man is not hurt so much by what happens, as by his opinion of what happens.

To an atheist all writings tend to atheism: he corrupts the most innocent matter with his own venom.

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.

Our zeal works wonders, whenever it supports our inclination toward hatred, cruelty, ambition.

On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.