Michel de Montaigne Quotes

I wouldn't play glamour for glamour.

I feel it is obvious when someone has thought too much about what they're wearing.

Style equals pretense.

Foppery is the egotism of clothes.

A person who is anxious to be a leader of the fashion, or one of the first to follow it, will certainly appear in the eyes of judicious men to have nothing better than a frequent change of dress to recommend him to notice.

Ambition sufficiently plagues her proselytes, by keeping themselves always in show, like the statue of a public place.

Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sorts of humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions.

I am sure the man who powders most, perfumes most, embroiders most, and talks most nonsense, is most admired. Though to be candid, there are some who have too much good sense to esteem such monkey-like animals as these, in whose formation, as the saying is, the tailors and barbers go halves with God Almighty.

Fashion is the veriest goddess of semblance and of shade; to be happy is of far less consequence to her worshippers than to appear so; even pleasure itself they sacrifice to parade, and enjoyment to ostentation.

Laughter tends to mock the pompous and the pretentious; all man's boastful gadding about, all his pretty pomps, his hoary customs, his wornout creeds, changing the glitter of them into the dullest hue of lead.

They please, are pleas'd, they give to get esteem Till, seeming blest, they grow to what they seem.

Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts. It's like passing around samples of sputum.

We have not the love of greatness, but the love of the love of greatness.

Why is it that the less one has to say the more one says it in the most pompous and pedantic way possible?... Is it to fool the world or just to fool themselves?

I have seldom seen much ostentation and much learning met together.

An actress without talent, forty years old, ate a partridge for dinner, and I felt sorry for the partridge, for it occurred to me that in its life it had been more talented, more sensible, and more honest than the actress.

Paltry affectation, strained allusions, and disgusting finery are easily attained by those who choose to wear them; they are but too frequently the badges of ignorance or of stupidity, whenever it would endeavor to please.

Foppery, being the chronic condition of women, is not so much noticed as it is when it breaks out on the person of the male bird.

A coxcomb is ugly all over with the effectation of a fine gentleman.

Materialistic I'm narcissistic My shoe game is mean It's so sadistic

There is much money given to be laughed at, though the purchasers don't know it; witness A.'s fine horse, and B.'s fine house.

When a youth was giving himself airs in the Theatre and saying, 'I am wise, for I have conversed with many wise men,' Epictetus replied, 'I too have conversed with many rich men, yet I am not rich!’.

The pure modernist is merely a snob; he cannot bear to be a month behind the fashion.

A man is ridiculous less through the characteristics he has than through those he affects to have.