Michel de Montaigne Quotes

New customs, Though they be never so ridiculous (Nay, let em be unmanly), yet are followed.

Rules are really weird things, aren't they? I feel like the more I do something, the more I see through rules. I see the reason to ignore it, but at the same time, "That's why they made that rule!"

Custom meets us at the cradle and leaves us only at the tomb.

Custom is a violent and treacherous school mistress. She, by little and lithe, slyly and unperceived, slips in the foot of her authority; but having by this gentle and humble beginning, with the benefit of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious and tyrannic countenance, against which we have no more the courage or the power so much as to lift up our eyes.

We delude ourselves into believing that morality comes from somewhere else, whereas in reality we behave as we've been told to behave.

Let us then, dear friends, forever bow down to the general reason of society.

rules exist for a reason. Rules exist because when people don't follow them, people get hurt.

Always obey your parents - when they are present.

Society will be obeyed; if you refuse obedience, you must take the consequences. Society has only one law, and that is custom. Even religion itself is socially powerful only just so far as it has custom on its side.

Habits and customs are a convenience devised for the support of timid natures who dare not allow their souls free play.

Be a constant outrage to modesty There is nothing to fear: modesty is exercised only among the blind.

Do you know what morals are? Morals are an obedience to rules that people laid down to help you live among them.

There are good reasons for being obedient, but being unable to be disobedient is not one of the best reasons.

Moral result can only be produced by moral restraints.

Keep in mind, I'm not allowed to be tough. I'm tamed.

When one wants to change manners and customs, one should not do so by changing the laws.

Society's the mother of convention.

When any practice has become the fixed rule of the society in which we live, it is always wise to adhere to that rule, unless it call upon us to do something that is actually wrong. One should not offend the prejudices of the world, even if one is quite sure that they are prejudices.

The superior man does what is proper to the station in which he is; he does not desire to go beyond this.

In my day, there were things that were done, and things that were not done, and there was even a way of doing things that were not done.

Moral laws are set as a curb and restraint to these exorbitant desires, which they cannot be but by rewards and punishments, that will over-balance the satisfaction any one shall propose to himself in the breach of the law.

We make our customs lightly; once made, like our sins, they grip us in bands of steel; we become the creatures of our creation.

Conformity is an imitation of grace.

Custom, then, is the great guide of human life. It is that principle alone, which renders our experience useful to us, and makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of events with those which have appeared in the past.

Conventions are like coins, an easy way of dealing with the commerce of relations.