“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.”
Life
“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.”
AloneAll Quotes by Michel de Montaigne
“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.”
Nature“A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.”
Good“We can be knowledgable with other men's knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.”
Knowledge“There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.”
Fear“Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.”
Future“I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.”
Work“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.”
Strength“I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.”
Education“The ceaseless labour of your life is to build the house of death.”
Death“Marriage, a market which has nothing free but the entrance.”
Marriage“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.”
Learning“Marriage is like a cage one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.”
Marriage“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.”
Truth“Those who have compared our life to a dream were right... we were sleeping wake, and waking sleep.”
Dreams“My trade and art is to live.”
Art“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.”
Alone“No pleasure has any savor for me without communication.”
Communication“Let us permit nature to have her way. She understands her business better than we do.”
Business“The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.”
Courage