Michel de Montaigne Quotes

Practice self-awareness, self-evaluation, and self-improvement. If we are aware that our manners - language, behavior, and actions - are measured against our values and principles, we are able to more easily embody the philosophy, leadership is a matter of how to be, not how to do.

I study for myself, my own games and others.

As you are entered with the class of Nat. philosophy, give to it the hours of lecture, but devote all your other time to Mathematics, avoiding company as the bane of all progress.

If you were to fault yourself in one of three areas, which would it be: (1) the inability to prioritize; (2) the inability or desire to organize around those priorities; or (3) the lack of discipline to execute around them? ... Most people say their main fault is a lack of discipline. On deeper thought, I believe that is not the case. The basic problem is that their priorities have not become deeply planted in their hearts and minds. They haven't really internalized Habit 2 [Begin with the end in mind].

The Buddha also counseled the monks and nuns to avoid wasting any precious time by engaging in idle conversation, oversleeping, pursuing fame and recognition, chasing after desires, spending time with people of poor character, and being satisfied with only a shallow understanding of the teaching.

So much working, reading, thinking, living to do! A lifetime is not long enough.

O, Begin! Fix some part of every day for private exercises... Whether you like it or no, read and pray daily. It is for your life; there is no other way; else you will be a trifler all your days... Do justice to your own soul; give it time and means to grow. Do not starve yourself any longer.

He who pays no attention to what his neighbor does, says or thinks, preferring to concentrate on making his own actions appropriate and justifiable, better uses his time.

What activities, behaviors, or decisions have been most responsible for your success in life? Do more of them.

Looking back, I should have pursued philosophy and economics and things of that sort in college more, but I didn't.

In order to cultivate yourself and to drop no lower than the level of the milieu in which you have landed, it is not enough to read Pickwick and memorize a monologue from Faust... You need to work continually day and night, to read ceaselessly, to study, to exercise your will... Each hour is precious.

If an earnest person has roused himself, if he is not forgetful, if his deeds are pure, if he acts with consideration, if he restrains himself, and lives according to law,then his glory will increase.

Spend regularly and constantly two or three hours of the morning in study and retirement. I do not take upon me to prescribe what you shall employ yourself about. I only propose the passing two or three hours of the twenty-four in private.

When you actively engage in gradually refining yourself, you retreat from your lazy ways of covering yourself or making excuses. Instead of feeling a persistent current of low-level shame, you move forward by using the creative possibilities of this moment, your current situation.

And you are never to stir out of doors till you can prove that you have spent ten minutes of every day in a rational manner.

Discipline is like cabbage. We may not care for it ourselves, but feel sure it would be good for somebody else.

I try not to get caught up on how cool I am. That way nothing ever gets done. I'm always thinking about what I haven't done.

If you're serious about becoming a wealthy, powerful, sophisticated, healthy, influential, cultured and unique individual, keep a journal. Don't trust your memory. When you listen to something valuable, write it down. When you come across something important, write it down.

'As a man who knows how to make his education into a rule of life not a means of showing off; who can control himself and obey his own principles.' The true mirror of our discourse is the course of our lives.

Plan your hours to be productive...Plan your weeks to be educational...Plan your years to be purposeful. Plan your life to be an experience of growth. Plan to change. Plan to grow.

I'm trying to be really synced. It goes back to the idea that, ultimately, the reward is the work. The staying balanced, it requires you to know that the work you're doing right now is ultimately what is going to give you the sense of freedom that you're hoping to find in a more realized life.

By thinking and acting affirmatively in this minute, you will influence the hour, the day, and in time, your entire life.

You've just got to focus on what you have to do.

Do not waste what remains of your life in speculating about your neighbors, unless with a view to some mutual benefit. To wonder what so-and-so is doing and why, or what he is saying, or thinking, or scheming -- in a word, anything that distracts you from fidelity to the ruler within you -- means a loss of opportunity for some other task.

It has often been observed, that those who have the most time at their disposal profit by it the least. A single hour a day, steadily given to the study of some interesting subject, brings unexpected accumulations of knowledge.