Michel De Montaigne

There is a sort of gratification in doing good which makes us rejoice in ourselves.

Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition.

We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.

Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.

Ambition is not a vice of little people.

No pleasure has any savor for me without communication.

A straight oar looks bent in the water. It matters not merely that we see a thing, but how we see it.

Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of soul, impossible.

The soul which has no fixed purpose in life is lost; to be everywhere, is to be nowhere.

Marriage, a market which has nothing free but the entrance.

One may be humble out of pride.

'Tis the sharpness of our mind that gives the edge to our pains and pleasures.

I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.

If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not even think of themselves.

Confidence in the goodness of another is good proof of one's own goodness.

I quote others only in order the better to express myself.

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

I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself, and not by borrowing.

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

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

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