Michel de Montaigne Quotes

Folly pursues us at all periods of our lives. If someone seems wise it is only because his follies are proportionate to his age and fortune.

The military market is based on human folly, not normal market precepts. Human folly goes up and down, but it always exists. It's depths have never been plumbed.

In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.

... the populace is variable and inconstant, so that, if a reputation be not kept up, it quickly withers away.

We are a puny and fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases.

A man who is not a fool can rid himself of every folly except vanity.

Men are so completely fools by necessity that he is but a fool in a higher strain of folly who does not confess his foolishness.

When prosperous the fool trembles for the evil that is to come; in adversity the philosopher smiles for the good that he has had.

The signature of mediocrity is not an unwillingness to change. The signature of mediocrity is inconsistency.

You change your mind Like a girl changes clothes

Condition de l'homme: inconstance, ennui, inquie tude. Man's condition. Inconstancy, boredom, anxiety.

Every one hath a foole in his sleeve.

Love, a pleasant folly; ambition, a serious stupidity.

Piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.

For man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion.

He who does not seek advice is a fool. His folly blinds him to Truth and makes him evil, stubborn, and a danger to his fellow man.

Thus, in a middle course between these heights and depths, they drifted through life rather than lived, the prey of aimless days and sterile memories, like wandering shadows that could have acquired substance only by consenting to root themselves in the solid earth of their distress.

The common curse of mankind, folly and ignorance, be thine in great revenue!

Fortune, to show us her power in all things, and to abate our presumption, seeing she could not make fools wise, has made them fortunate.

Do not be proud of your inconsistency. It is a pity, it is a pity that we should be equipped like this. It is a pity that Man cannot be at the same time impressive and truthful.

In the end, each life is no more than the sum of contingent facts, a chronicle of chance intersections, of flukes, of random events that divulge nothing but their own lack of purpose.

I sometimes feel that I have nothing to say and I want to communicate this.

A man of variable mind is not one man, but several men in one; he multiplies himself as often as he changes his taste and manners; he is not this minute what he was the last, and will not be the next what he is now; he is his own successor.