Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in memory as the wish to forget it.

How many worthy men can survive their own reputations?

Diogenes was asked what wine he liked best; and he answered as I would have done when he said: "Somebody else's."

I have never observed other effects of whipping than to render boys more cowardly or more wilfully obstinate.

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

Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.

Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.

I will follow the right side even to the fire, but excluding the fire if I can.

Bystra głowa jest lepsza od napełnionej.

All passions that suffer themselves to be relished and digested are but moderate.

Arts and sciences are not cast in a mould, but are formed and perfected by degrees, by often handling and polishing, as bears leisurely lick their cubs into form.

Few men have been admired by their own domestics.

For a desperate disease a desperate cure.

He that I am reading seems always to have the most force.

He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.

I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.

Wolę towarzystwo wieśniaków, gdyż nie zostali oni wykształceni dostatecznie do tego, aby rozumować niepoprawnie

I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.

I speak truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare; and I dare a little the more as I grow older.

It happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.

It is not without good reason said, that he who has not a good memory should never take upon him the trade of lying.

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

Man in sooth is a marvellous, vain, fickle, and unstable subject.

Man is certainly stark mad. He cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by the dozen.

Men are most apt to believe what they least understand.

The mind is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not discreetly how to use it.

Nature forms us for ourselves, not for others; to be, not to seem.

The oldest and best known evil was ever more supportable than one that was new and untried.

Jedynymi dobrymi historiami są te, które zostały napisane przez same osoby, które przewodziły sprawom, o których piszą.

The only good histories are those that have been written by the persons themselves who commanded in the affairs whereof they write.

Perched on the loftiest throne in the world, we are still sitting on our own behind.

Ubóstwo dóbr jest łatwo wyleczyć; ubóstwo umysłu jest nieodwracalne.

Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of the mind is irreparable.

Saying is one thing, doing another.

The sciences and arts are not cast in a mold, but formed and shaped little by little, by repeated handling and polishing, as bears lick their cubs into shape at leisure.

There is more ado to interpret interpretations than to interpret the things, and more books upon books than upon all other subjects; we do nothing but comment upon one another.

There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.

There never was in the world two opinions alike, no more than two hairs or two grains; the most universal quality is diversity.

When I play with my cat, who knows whether she isn't amusing herself with me more than I am with her?

A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself.

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

Now, since everything else is furnished with the exact amount of needle and thread required to maintain its being, it is in truth incredible that we alone should be brought into the world in a defective and indigent state, in a state such that we cannot maintain ourselves without external aid.

Our skin is provided as adequately as theirs with endurance against the assaults of the weather: witness so many nations who have not yet tried the use of any clothes. Our ancient Gauls wore hardly any clothes; nor do the Irish, our neighbors, under so cold a sky.

For all parts of the body that we see fit to expose to the wind and air are found fit to endure it: face, feet, hands, legs, shoulders, head, according as custom invites us. For if there is a part of us that is tender and that seems as though it should fear the cold, it should be the stomach, where digestion takes place; our fathers left it uncovered, and our ladies, soft and delicate as they are, sometimes go half bare down to the navel.

Man is the sole animal whose nudities offend his own companions, and the only one who, in his natural actions, withdraws and hides himself from his own kind.

Od pięknej kobiety prędko odwykniesz, od dobrej nigdy

A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.