Michel de Montaigne Quotes

What is life? A madness. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story. And the greatest good is little enough; for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.

Shall I speak truly what I now see below? The World is all a carkass, smoak and vanity, The shadow of a shadow, a play And in one word, just Nothing.

Things are only mannequins and even the great world-historical events are only costumes beneath which they exchange glances with nothingness.

This life, which had been the tomb of his virtue and of his honour, is but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Avoid the world, it's just a lot of dust and drag and means nothing in the end.

I see that all of us who live are nothing but images or insubstantial shadow.

All is vanity, look you; and so the preacher is vanity too.

What is life if not the shadow of a fleeting dream?

No one could have less faith in the absolute and definitive importance of the work created by man, because I believe that this world is nothing but a dream.

Life doesn't last; art doesn't last. It doesn't matter.

And I despise your books, I despise wisdom and the blessings of this world. It is all worthless, fleeting, illusory, and deceptive, like a mirage. You may be proud, wise, and fine, but death will wipe you off the face of the earth as though you were no more than mice burrowing under the floor, and your posterity, your history, your immortal geniuses will burn or freeze together with the earthly globe.

Jump to the day we'll all be dead and none of this will matter. Jump to the day another house will stand here and the people living there won't know we ever happened.

Fame is nothing but an empty name.

We're all making castles in the sand, wonderful tapestries, an exquisite corpse. But is it meaningful? No. It's dogs barking. It doesn't mean anything beyond our yelping, at the pain of being alive.

What is this world? A mere curl of smoke for the wind to scatter.

The honors of this world, what are they but puff, and emptiness, and peril of falling?

I've been to MTV and all of that worldly stuff. It's death. It's meaningless.

All phenomena are empty.

Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer and then you find there is nothing in it.

Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.

For boredom speaks the language of time, and it is to teach you the most valuable lesson of your life - the lesson of your utter insignificance.

Life has become the ideology of its own absence.

I see the state of all of us who live, nothing more than phantoms or a weightless shadow.

Heaven fashioned us of nothing; and we strive to bring ourselves to nothing.