Michel de Montaigne

It is the part of cowardice, not of courage, to go and crouch in a hole under a massive tomb, to avoid the blows of fortune.

There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.

He who remembers the evils he has undergone, and those that have threatened him, and the slight causes that have changed him from one state to another, prepares himself in that way for future changes and for recognizing his condition. The life of Caesar has no more to show us than our own; an emperor's or an ordinary man's, it is still a life subject to all human accidents.

Wherever your life ends, it is all there. The utility of living consists not in the length of days, but in the use of time; a man may have lived long, and yet lived but a little. Make use of time while it is present with you. It depends upon your will, and not upon the number of days, to have a sufficient length of life. Is it possible you can imagine never to arrive at the place towards which you are continually going? and yet there is no journey but hath its end. And, if company will make it more pleasant or more easy to you, does not all the world go the self-same way?

Things are not so painful and difficult of themselves, but our weakness or cowardice makes them so.

The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them... Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.

Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.

He who should teach men to die would at the same time teach them to live.

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be oneself.

I do not care so much what I am to others as I care what I am to myself.

I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics; that is my physics.

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

I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better.