Michel de Montaigne Quotes

To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquility in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately. All other things, ruling, hoarding, building, are only little appendages and props, at most.

All your scholarship, all your study of Shakespeare and Wordsworth would be in vain, if at the same time you do not build your character, and attain mastery over your thoughts and actions.

Do you wish the world were better? Let me tell you what to do: Set a watch upon your actions, Keep them always straight and true.

Character is what emerges from all the little things you were too busy to do yesterday, but did anyway.

If you think you can temper yourself into manliness by sitting here over your books, it is the very silliest fancy that ever tempted a young man to his ruin. You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.

Discipline is training that corrects and perfects our mental faculties or molds our moral character. Discipline is control gained by enforced obedience. It is the deliberate cultivation of inner order.

If you can win complete mastery over self, you will easily master all else. To triumph over self is the perfect victory.

The discipline of desire is the background of character.

I think I have more patience now than I did in the past.

You cannot lead others until you have first learned to lead yourself.

Character is the result of two great forces: the initial force which the Creator gave it when He called the man into being; and the force of all the external influence and culture that mold and modify the development of a life.

The very purpose of religion is to control yourself, not to criticise others.

Humility and self-restraint is the True Objective of Kenpo

Force yourself to be humble, until it becomes second nature. Then it will be an unconscious activity.

Never stop working on your statue until the divine glory of virtue shines out on you, until you see self-mastery enthroned upon its holy seat.

Neither in writing nor in reading wilt thou be able to lay down rules for others before thou shalt have first learned to obey rules thyself.

Let every man consider virtue as what devolves on himself. He may not yield the performance of it even to his teacher.

To gain the spiritual ascendancy over ourselves, and the influences with which we are surrounded, through a rigid course of self-discipline, is our first consideration, it is our first labor, before we can pave the way for our children to grow up without sin unto salvation.

The real purpose of the martial arts must be to purge oneself of petty ambitions and desire, to obtain control of one’s own character.

What the expression is intended to mean, I think, is that there is a better and a worse element in the character of each individual, and that when the naturally better element controls the worse then the man is said to be "master of himself", as a term of praise. But when - as a result of bad upbringing or bad company one s better element is overpowered by the numerical superiority of one s worse impulses, then one is criticized for not being master of oneself and for lack of self control.

When we have our body and mind in order, everything else will exist in the right place, in the right way. But usually, without being aware of it, we try to change something other than ourselves; we try to order things outside us. But it is impossible to organize things if you yourself are not in order. When you do things in the right way, at the right time, everything else will be organized.

A talent can be cultivated in tranquility; a character only in the rushing stream of life.

Conquer yourself and you can conquer everything else.

Do what you can to do what you ought, and leave hoping and fearing alone.

Each man must begin where he stands, must learn how to control the things that are nearest to him.