1. Michel Eyquem de Montaigne - “If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.”

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2. Michel Eyquem de Montaigne - “I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.”

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3. Michel Eyquem de Montaigne - “And one might therefore say of me that in this book I have only made up a bunch of other people’s flowers, and that of my own I have only provided the string that ties them together.”

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4. Michel Eyquem de Montaigne - “When I play with my cat, who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me? When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime to her more than she is to me? When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not more of a pastime to her than she is to me?”

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5. Michel Eyquem de Montaigne - “We need very strong ears to hear ourselves judged frankly, and because there are few who can endure frank criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to criticize us perform a remarkable act of friendship, for to undertake to wound or offend a man for his own good is to have a healthy love for him.”

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6. Michel Eyquem de Montaigne - “Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a flea, and yet he will be making gods by dozens. different translation Man is certainly crazy. He could not make a mite, and he makes gods by the dozen.”

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7. Michel Eyquem de Montaigne - “The thing I fear most is fear.”

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8. Michel Eyquem de Montaigne - “It is good to rub and polish your mind against the minds of others.”

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9. Michel Eyquem de Montaigne - “We can be knowledgable with other men's knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.”

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10. Michel Eyquem de Montaigne - “The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them: a man may live long, yet get little from life. Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.”

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11. Michel Eyquem de Montaigne - “Malice sucks up the greater part of her own venom, and poisons herself.”

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12. Michel Eyquem de Montaigne - “A man must be a little mad if he does not want to be even more stupid.”

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13. Michel Eyquem de Montaigne - “Marriage may be compared to a cage: the birds outside frantic to get in and those inside frantic to get out.”

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14. Michel Eyquem de Montaigne - “The mind is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not discreetly how to use it.”

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15. Michel Eyquem de Montaigne - “Miracles arise from our ignorance of nature, not from nature itself.”

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16. Michel Eyquem de Montaigne - “My trade and my art is living.”

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17. Michel Eyquem de Montaigne - “Everyone recognizes me in my book, and my book in me.”

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18. Michel Eyquem de Montaigne - “The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know everything.”

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19. Michel Eyquem de Montaigne - “I quote others only the better to express myself.”

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20. Michel Eyquem de Montaigne - “When all is summed up, a man never speaks of himself without loss; his accusations of himself are always believed; his praises never.”

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21. Michel Eyquem de Montaigne - “A man of understanding has lost nothing, if he has himself.”

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22. Michel Eyquem de Montaigne - “I speak the truth, not my fill of it, but as much as I dare speak, and I dare to do so a little more as I grow old.”

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23. Michel Eyquem de Montaigne - “Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition.”

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24. Michel Eyquem de Montaigne - “Men are most apt to believe what they least understand.”

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25. Michel Eyquem de Montaigne - “Virtue can have naught to do with ease.... It craves a steep and thorny path.”

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