Michel de Montaigne Quotes

There are three signs of senility. The first sign is that a man forgets his theorems. The second sign is that he forgets to zip up. The third sign is that he forgets to zip down.

When you become senile, you won't know it.

The people wish to be deceived; let them be deceived.

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to go to pieces like this but we all have to do it.

My grandfather said, "When you become senile, you won't know it."

Old birds like Orlovius are wonderfully easy to lead by the beak, because a combination of decency and sentimentality is exactly equal to being a fool.

That folly of old age which is called dotage is peculiar to silly old men, not to age itself.

There is not a man who does not get senile by the time he reaches sixty. And when one thinks that he will not be senile, he is already so.

My people have been wearing green glasses on their eyes for so long that most of them think this really is an Emerald City.

O that men's ears should be To counsel deaf but not to flattery!

The worst old age is that of the mind.

You must remember, my dear lady, the most important rule of any successful illusion: First, the people must want to believe in it.

For as the body grows old, so the wits grow old and become blind towards all things alike.

Some things get better with age, but after a certain point, the mind isn't among them.

Only fools imagine they are already awake. How clearly they understand everything! How easily they distinguish this deception from that reality!

Like an audience entertained by a magician, we allow ourselves to be deceived by those with a stake in persuading us to ignore reality.

When I'm 70 I might be a man in a park just wandering around, speaking in tongues with kids throwing bread at me.

Old men are children once again a dream that sways and wavers into the hard light of day.

He sees very clearly - he damn sure sees through me. It's hard to accept that someone can understand you without wishing you well. At Starling's age it hadn't happened to her much.

The human race's favorite method for being in control of facts is to ignore them.

Do not try to entrap others with your haughty knowledge. To your wide surprise, they will entrap you with their lengthy ignorance.

Devils so work that things which are not, appear to men as if they were real.

If I told you, you might be forced to lie about it. Not that you aren't really good at it, but why put an old man in that position?

It is a triumph of life that old people lose their memories of inessential things.