Michel de Montaigne Quotes

Don't go through life, grow through life.

Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid.

I'm always trying to figure out what my taste is, what my likes and dislikes are.

But whenever I look at the question of how to live, the answer's always staring me in the face. I'm already doing it.

I don't think you can come into your wisdom until you have made mistakes on your own skin and felt them in reality of your own life.

There's a point when your tape of life runs off the reel and there's this stillness of your own - I got to know myself.

I don't like work... but I like what is in work - the chance to find yourself. Your own reality - for yourself, not for others - which no other man can ever know.

Call it egotistical or narcissist, but I think that's what we all look for in books - the right stories that help us make sense of the world that we, on a very personal level, live in every day.

The problem is that even as you reveal the mysteries in your past, you are accumulating them in the present; complete honesty is the stuff of post-mortem, not autobiography.

Knowing yourself is to be rooted in Being, instead of lost in your mind.

So many of us have not attended to the deeper issues in ourselves; in our minds, our hearts, and in our external manifestations that keep love at bay. We instead concentrate on making a list of what we're looking for in another person.

The self-explorer, whether he wants to or not, becomes the explorer of everything else.

Self knowledge is always bad news.

a lesson must be lived in order to be learned and the clarity to see and stop this now that is what i've earned

I do know my own mind,' protested Anne. 'The trouble is, my mind changes and then I have to get acquainted with it all over again.

One does not "find oneself" by pursuing one's self, but on the contrary by pursuing something else and learning through discipline or routine. . . who one is and wants to be.

A person loves to review his own mind. That is the use of a diary, or journal.

People who do not understand themselves have a craving for understanding — a thing which is rather surmised and never spoken than known and clothed in words.

I believe in the importance of seeking self-knowledge. The more I know myself, the more I feel empowered.

How can we learn self-knowledge? Never by taking thought but rather by action. Try to do your duty and you'll soon discover what you're like.

The most dangerous thing you can do is know who you are.

Failing to understand the workings of one's own mind is bound to lead to unhappiness.

It is evident that man never attains to a true self-knowledge until he has previously contemplated the face of God, and come down after such contemplation to look into himself.

A mind might ponder its thought for an epoch, and not gain so much self-knowledge as the passion of love shall teach in a day.

The older you get, you always learn more. Sometimes it's a process of learning about yourself and what your journey is. Sometimes the process moves forward at a rapid pace in a short amount of time - or moves backwards. And you're like, "Man, I thought I had made so much progress, and now all of a sudden, I'm 10 steps further behind than when I started."