Michel de Montaigne Mind Quotations

Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.

Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.

'Tis the sharpness of our mind that gives the edge to our pains and pleasures.

It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness. A spirited mind never stops within itself; it is always aspiring and going beyond its strength.

I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better.

Ambition is, of all other, the most contrary humor to solitude; and glory and repose are so inconsistent that they cannot possibly inhabit one and the same place; and for so much as I understand, those have only their arms and legs disengaged from the crowd, their mind and intention remain engaged behind more than ever.

The pleasure we hold in esteem for the course of our lives ought to have a greater share of our time dedicated to it; we should refuse no occasion nor omit any opportunity of drinking, and always have it in our minds.

Is it reasonable that even the arts should take advantage of and profit by our natural stupidity and feebleness of mind?

A wellborn mind that is practiced in dealing with people makes itself thoroughly agreeable by itself. Art is nothing else but thelist and record of the productions of such minds.

If my mind could gain a firm footing, I would not make essays, I would make decisions; but it is always in apprenticeship and on trial.

If these Essays were worthy of being judged, it might fall out, in my opinion, that they would not find much favour, either with common and vulgar minds, or with uncommon and eminent ones: the former would not find enough in them, the latter would find too much; they might manage to live somewhere in the middle region.

We must not attach knowledge to the mind; we have to incorporate it there.

To distract myself from tiresome thoughts, I have only to resort to books; they easily draw my mind to themselves and away from other things.

So it is with minds. Unless you keep them busy with some definite subject that will bridle and control them, they throw themselves in disorder hither and yon in the vague field of imagination... And there is no mad or idle fancy that they do not bring forth in the agitation.

To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind for it.

Meditation is a rich and powerful method of study for anyone who knows how to examine his mind.

Who so hath his mind on taking, hath it no more on what he taketh.

All permanent decisions are made in a temporary state of mind.

No spiritual mind remains within itself; it is always aspiring and going beyond its own strength.

Nothing prints more lively in our minds than something we wish to forget.

I had rather fashion my mind than furnish it.

Perhaps it is not without reason that we attribute facility in belief and conviction to simplicity and ignorance; for it seems to me I once learned that belief was sort of an impression made on our mind, and that the softer it is the less resistant t.

It is a thorny undertaking, and more so than it seems, to follow a movement so wandering as that of our mind, to penetrate the opaque depths of its innermost folds, to pick out and immobilize the innumerable flutterings that agitate it.

The worth of the mind consisteth not in going high, but in marching orderly.

It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness.

The most fruitful and natural exercise for our minds is, in my opinion, conversation.

It is not a mind, it is not a body that we educate, but it is a man, and we must not make two parts of him.

The first lessons with which we should irrigate his mind should be those which teach him to know himself, and to know how to die ... and to live.

I enter into discussion and argument with great freedom and ease, inasmuch as opinion finds me in a bad soil to penetrate and take deep root in. No propositions astonish me, no belief offends me, whatever contrast it offers to my own. There is no fancy so frivolous and so extravagant that it does not seem to me quite suitable to the production of the human mind.