In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page- boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk – they are all part of the curriculum. – Michel de Montaigne
In nine lifetimes, you’ll never know as much about your cat as your cat knows about you. – Michel de Montaigne
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. – Michel de Montaigne
There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom. – 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
Wit is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not how to use it discreetly. – Michel de Montaigne
The beautiful souls are they that are universal, open, and ready for all things. – Michel de Montaigne
Any person of honor chooses rather to lose his honor than to lose his conscience. – Michel de Montaigne
If you don’t know how to die, don’t worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don’t bother your head about it. – Michel de Montaigne
It is a monstrous thing that I will say, but I will say it all the same: I find in many things more restraint and order in my morals than in my opinions, and my lust less depraved than my reason. – Michel de Montaigne
I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself, and not by borrowing. – Michel de Montaigne
The world is all a carcass and vanity, The shadow of a shadow, a play And in one word, just nothing. – Michel de Montaigne
If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not even think of themselves. – 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. – Michel de Montaigne
Those who have compared our life to a dream were right… we were sleeping wake, and waking sleep. – Michel de Montaigne
I speak the truth not so much as I would, but as much as I dare, and I dare a little more as I grow older. – Michel de Montaigne
