Michel de Montaigne Law Quotations

The only thing certain is nothing is certain.

Life in itself is neither good nor evil, it is the place of good and evil, according to what you make it.

Laws are maintained in credit, not because they are essentially just, but because they are laws. It is the mystical foundation of their authority; they have none other.

I love those historians that are either very simple or most excellent. Such as are between both (which is the most common fashion), it is they that spoil all; they will needs chew our meat for us and take upon them a law to judge, and by consequence to square and incline the story according to their fantasy.

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.

Il n'est si homme de bien, qu'il mette à l'examen des loix toutes ses actions et pensées, qui ne soit pendable dix fois en sa vie.(There is no man so good that if he placed all his actions and thoughts under the scrutiny of the laws, he would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.)

The sage says that all that is under heaven incurs the same law and the same fate.

The laws of conscience, though we ascribe them to nature, actually come from custom.

Ceremony forbids us to express by words things that are lawful and natural, and we obey it; reason forbids us to do things unlawful and ill, and nobody obeys it.

The daughter-in-law of Pythagoras said that a woman who goes to bed with a man ought to lay aside her modesty with her skirt, and put it on again with her petticoat

Whether the events in our life are good or bad, greatly depends on the way we perceive them.

There is a huge gulf between the man who follows the conventions and laws of his country and the man who sets out to regiment them and to change them.

The clatter of arms drowns out the voice of law.

Necessity reconciles and brings men together; and this accidental connection afterward forms itself into laws.

Nature has with a Motherly Tenderness observed this, that the Action she has enjoyned us for our Necessity should be also pleasant to us, and invites us to them, not only by Reason, but also by Appetite: and ’tis Injustice to infringe her Laws.

I am further of opinion that it would be better for us to have [no laws] at all than to have them in so prodigious numbers as we have.

I don't break the law* made for crooks, when I take away my own property - thus I am not obliged to conform to the law made for murderers when I deprive myself of my own life.

Laws are often made by fools, and even more often by men who fail in equity because they hate equality: but always by men, vain authorities who can resolve nothing.

It is the rule of rules, and the general law of all laws, that every person should observe those of the place where he is.

Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle; but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages.

The way of the world is to make laws, but follow custom.

Lawyers and physicians are an ill provision for any country.

The laws keep up their credit, not by being just, but because they are laws; 'tis the mystic foundation of their authority; they have no other, and it well answers their purpose. They are often made by fools; still oftener by men who, out of hatred to equality, fail in equity; but always by men, vain and irresolute authors.

The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from Custom.

It is indeed the boundary of life, beyond which we are not to pass; which the law of nature has pitched for a limit not to be exceeded.

To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind for it.

It would be better to have no laws at all, than to have too many.