Michel de Montaigne

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

“It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.”

“It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness. A spirited mind never stops within itself it is always aspiring and going beyond its strength.”

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

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

“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.”

“The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.”

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

“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.”

“My trade and art is to live.”

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

“No pleasure has any savor for me without communication.”

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

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

“Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.”

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

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

“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.”

“There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.”

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

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

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

“There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.”

“The thing I fear most is fear.”