Michel de Montaigne Life Quotations

Long life, and short, are by death made all one; for there is no long, nor short, to things that are no more.

The perpetual work of your life is but to lay the foundation of death.

In nine lifetimes, you'll never know as much about your cat as your cat knows about you.

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.

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.

Those who have compared our life to a dream were right... we were sleeping wake, and waking sleep.

We trouble our life by thoughts about death, and our death by thoughts about life.

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.

If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.

~The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them ~

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

Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own.

It needs good management to enjoy life. I enjoy it twice as much as others, for the measure of enjoyment depends on the greater or less attention that we give to it...The shorter my possession of life the deeper and fuller I must make it.

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.

We must learn to endure what we cannot avoid. Our life is composed, like the harmony of the world, of contrary things, also of different tones, sweet and harsh, sharp and flat, soft and loud. If a musician liked only one kind, what would he have to say?

What of a truth that is bounded by these mountains and is falsehood to the world that lives beyond?

The pleasantest things in the world are pleasant thoughts, and the great art of life is to have as many of them as possible.

Have you been able to think out and manage your own life? You have done the greatest task of all.... All other things, ruling, hoarding, building, are only little appendages and props, at most.

Make use of life while you have it. Whether you have lived enough depends upon yourself, not on the number of your years.

The ceaseless labour of your life is to build the house of death.

I set forth a humble and inglorious life; that does not matter. You can tie up all moral philosophy with a common and private life just as well as with a life of richer stuff. Each man bears the entire form of man's estate.

I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie.

All the fame you should look for in life is to have lived it quietly.

I would rather be old for a shorter time than be old before my time.

Were I to live my life over again, I should live it just as I have done. I neither complain of the past, nor do I fear the future.

He loves little who loves by rule.

We are more unhappy to see people ahead of us than happy to see people behind us.

The great and glorious masterpiece of humanity is to know how to live with a purpose.

There were many terrible things in my life and most of them never happened.

The continuous work of our life is to build death.

My art and profession is to live.

There is no knowledge so hard to acquire as the knowledge of how to live this life well and naturally.

The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use; some men have lived long, and lived little; attend to it while you are in it. It lies in your will, not in the number of years, for you to have lived enough.

If you have known how to compose your life, you have done a great deal more than the person who knows how to compose a book. You have done more than the one who has taken cities and empires.

Pythagoras used to say that life resembles the Olympic Games: a few people strain their muscles to carry off a prize; others bring trinkets to sell to the crowd for gain; and some there are, and not the worst, who seek no other profit than to look at the show and see how and why everything is done; spectators of the life of other people in order to judge and regulate their own.

The finest lives in my opinion are the common model, without miracle and without extravagance.

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.

As for me, then, I love life and cultivate it just as God has been pleased to grant it to us.

My trade and my art is living. He who forbids me to speak about it according to my sense, experience, and practice, let him orderthe architect to speak of buildings not according to himself but according to his neighbor; according to another man's knowledge, not according to his own.

If I can, I shall keep my death from saying anything that my life has not already said.

Women are not altogether in the wrong when they refuse the rules of life prescribed to the World, for men only have established them and without their consent.