Michel de Montaigne

I put forward formless and unresolved notions, as do those who publish doubtful questions to debate in the schools, not to establish the truth but to seek it.

There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.

We can be knowledgable with other men's knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.

There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge.

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

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

Stubborn and ardent clinging to one's opinion is the best proof of stupidity.

It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.

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

Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.

It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness. A spirited mind never stops within itself; it is always aspiring and going beyond its strength.

Let us permit nature to have her way. She understands her business better than we do.

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.

Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.

For truly it is to be noted, that children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.

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.

There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.

No pleasure has any savor for me without communication.