Michel de Montaigne Quotes

We live, not as we wish to, but as we can.

Live in the world you inhabit. Look upon things as they are. Take them as you find them. Make the best of them. Turn them to your advantage.

One learns to itch where one can scratch.

Don't fight a fact, deal with it.

I do the best with what exists.

While we should never give up our principles, we must also realize that we cannot maintain our principles unless we survive.

It is best to live however one can be.

There's always going to be something. Can't be perfect.

You can't always get the perfect moment. Sometimes, you just have to do the best you can under the circumstances.

You work with what you got.

Let us resolve to do the best we can with what we've got.

But what is to be done? Is it possible to infect ourselves on purpose just in order to have the satisfaction of dying beautifully and tranquilly? No! What is to be done? We must live while we are alive, eat dry bread if there is no roast beef, know many women if it is not possible to love a woman, and, in general, we must not dream about orange trees and palms, when under foot are snowdrifts and the cold tundra.

It’s tempting to wish for the perfect boss, the perfect parent, or the perfect outfit. But maybe the best any of us can do is not to quit, play the hand we’ve been dealt, and accessorize what we’ve got.

I just try to work with what I'm given and make it the best I can.

We had to play the hand we were dealt, all of us. Fighting the battles we could win.

My view is rather than just rage at your impotence you find the best way of achieving as much as you can within whatever constraints there are. It's not the world I would have created but you do what you can within it.

Perfect life is a contradiction in terms. Therefore we must always expect to find things not up to our highest ideal. Knowing this, we are bound to make the best of everything.

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.

Most of the time, I'm not scared. I get on with life, not because I'm a fatalist, but because that's the most congenial way of dealing with things. Indeed, most of the time, I'm not conscious of dealing with anything.

I accepted a change in my life. I didn't choose that change and those are the best changes to make.

Not everything is going to be successful. To strive for that is really naive. You just do the best you can do.

The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.

You can't be idealistic in this world and not be crazy.

A man either lives life as it happens to him, meets it head-on and licks it, or he turns his back on it and starts to wither away.

If one cannot catch a bird of paradise, better take a wet hen.