Michel de Montaigne

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

“A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.”

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

“Confidence in the goodness of another is good proof of one's own goodness.”

“Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.”

“If you don't know how to die, don't worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don't bother your head about it.”

“Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky.”

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

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

“The thing I fear most is fear.”

“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.”

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

“My trade and art is to live.”

“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.”

“Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.”

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

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

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

“If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.”

“There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge.”

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