Michel de Montaigne

There is indeed a certain sense of gratification when we do a good deed that gives us inward satisfaction, and a generous pride that accompanies a good conscience_These testimonies of a good conscience are pleasant; and such a natural pleasure is very beneficial to us; it is the only payment that can never fail. __n Repentance

Certainly, if he still has himself, a man of understanding has lost nothing.

Il n'est si homme de bien, qu'il mette _ l'examen des loix toutes ses actions et pensées, qui ne soit pendable dix fois en sa vie.(There is no man so good that if he placed all his actions and thoughts under the scrutiny of the laws, he would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.)

Excellent memories are often coupled with feeble judgments.

I have heard Silvius, an excellent physician of Paris, say that lest the digestive faculties of the stomach should grow idle, it were not amiss once a month to rouse them by this excess, and to spur them lest they should grow dull and rusty; and one author tells us that the Persians used to consult about their mostimportant affairs after being well warmed with wine.

If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth, is as much to say, as that he is brave towards God and a coward towards men.

Meditation is a powerful and full study as can effectually taste and employ themselves.

Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre of sentiment and resolution, in the suffering of human accidents.

I listen with attention to the judgment of all men;but so far as I can remember,I have followed none but my own.

Without doubt, it is a delightful harmony when doing and saying go together.

It is a disaster that wisdom forbids you to be satisfied with yourself and always sends you away dissatisfied and fearful, whereas stubbornness and foolhardiness fill their hosts with joy and assurance.

If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.

There were many terrible things in my life and most of them never happened.

Though the ancient poet in Plutarch tells us we must not trouble the gods with our affairs because they take no heed of our angers and disputes, we can never enough decry the disorderly sallies of our minds.

He lives happy and master of himself who can say as each day passes on, "I have lived.

Valor is strength, not of legs and arms, but of heart and soul; it consists not in the worth of our horse or our weapons, but in our own.

The most profound joy has more of gravity than of gaiety in it.

The natural heat, say the good-fellows,first seats itself in the feet: that concerns infancy; thence it mounts into the middleregion, where it makes a long abode and produces, in my opinion, the sole true pleasures of human life; all other pleasures in comparison sleep; towards the end, like a vapor that still mounts upward, it arrives at the throat, where it makes its final residence, and concludes the progress.