Michel de Montaigne

The thing I fear most is fear.

There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.

There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.

There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom.

How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables.

There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.

In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page- boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk - they are all part of the curriculum.

I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.

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

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

Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.

It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.

The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.

Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.

No pleasure has any savor for me without communication.

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

Stubborn and ardent clinging to one's opinion is the best proof of stupidity.

My trade and art is to live.

There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.

Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.