Michel de Montaigne

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

Admiration is the foundation of all philosophy, inquisition the progress, ignorance the end.

Every man carries the entire form of the human condition within him.

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

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

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because it was I.

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

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

There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.