Michel de Montaigne Quotes

We fear to know the fearsome and unsavory aspects of ourselves, but we fear even more to know the godlike in ourselves.

I have never known a greater miracle, or monster, than myself.

My personality doesn't interest me.

No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.

Although men are accused of not knowing their weakness, yet perhaps as few know their strength.

We saw in him what we seek in ourselves.

I want people to find their inner depth.

The better you understand yourself the less cause you will find to love yourself.

We are not always even what we are most.

There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve, then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tiny blasts on tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us.

I am never more myself than in my self-betrayals.

I would give all I possess to get out of myself; but somehow, at the end, I find myself so vastly more interesting than nine tenths of the people I meet.

There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves. People are not, for example, terribly anxious to be equal (equal, after all, to what and to whom?) but they love the idea of being superior.

Look in the mirror. The face that pins you with its double gaze reveals a chastening secret.

I've been living with myself all of my life, so I know all of me. So when I watch me, all I see is me. It's boring.

Man is a universe within himself.

I think Zippy is part of me, but I'm not Zippy.

We carry within us the wonders we seek without us.

Somewhere deep down there's a decent man in me, he just can't be found.

We never completely comprehend ourselves, but we can do far more than comprehend.

Anybody can get lost in themselves.

When I read profiles of myself, I sometimes think: 'I have spent my whole life struggling to understand my motivations and impulses, and I've never quite sorted them out.'

I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics.

I have not had time to reflect on my own truths in many years.

We are sometimes as different from ourselves as we are from others.