How vain painting is-we admire the realistic depiction of objects which in their original state we don't admire at all..

The more intelligence one has, the more people one finds original. Commonplace people see no difference between men..

Everything that is incomprehensible does not, however, cease to exist..

What a difficult thing it is to ask someone's advice on a matter without coloring his judgment by the way in which we present our problem..

The consciousness of the falsity of present pleasures, and the ignorance of the vanity of absent pleasures, cause inconstancy..

For nature is an image of Grace, and visible miracles are images of the invisible..

True eloquence makes light of eloquence. True morality makes light of morality..

Custom determines what is agreeable..

Faith affirms many things, respecting which the senses are silent, but nothing that they deny. It is superior, but never opposed to their testimony.

All man's troubles come from not knowing how to sit still in one room..

Montaigne is wrong in declaring that custom ought to be followed simply because it is custom, and not because it is reasonable or just..

All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling..

Those who profess contempt for men, and put them on a level with beasts, yet wish to be admired and believed by men, and contradict themselves by the….

If we dreamed the same thing every night, it would affect us much as the objects we see every day. And if a common workman were sure to dream every n….

Discourses on humility are a source of pride in the vain and of humility in the humble..

Justice is what is established; and thus all our established laws will necessarily be regarded as just without examination, since they are establishe….

We must learn our limits. We are all something, but none of us are everything..

The gist is that good and evil are foreordained. What is foreordained comes necessarily to be after a prior act of divine volition...Rather, everythi….

Continuous eloquence is tedious..

There is nothing that we can see on earth which does not either show the wretchedness of man or the mercy of God. One either sees the powerlessness o….

When some passion or effect is described in a natural style, we find within ourselves the truth of what we hear, without knowing it was there..