QuoteProject
Pride and curiosity are the two scourges of our souls. The latter prompts us to poke our noses into everything, and the former forbids us to leave anything unresolved and undecided.
Michel De Montaigne
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Pride and curiosity can lead to turmoil within us; curiosity drives us to seek answers, while pride often stops us from accepting uncertainties.

In this quote, Michel De Montaigne reflects on the internal conflicts caused by pride and curiosity. Curiosity drives individuals to explore and understand the world, leading to questions and investigations. However, pride can prevent them from accepting situations or outcomes that are ambiguous or unresolved, creating a struggle within the soul. This interplay signifies the complexity of human nature, where the desire for knowledge can clash with the need for certainty and control.

Themes

PrideCuriositySoulResolveUndecided

In practice

Example use cases

During a discussion about human behavior, one might quote this to illustrate the conflict between pride and curiosity.

More from Michel De Montaigne

All the world knows me in my book, and my book in me.
Michel De MontaigneRead
All I say is by way of discourse, and nothing by way of advice. I should not speak so boldly if it were my due to be believed.
Michel De MontaigneRead
Pythagoras used to say that life resembles the Olympic Games: a few people strain their muscles to carry off a prize; others bring trinkets to sell to the crowd for gain; and some there are, and not the worst, who seek no other profit than to look at the show and see how and why everything is done; spectators of the life of other people in order to judge and regulate their own.
Michel De MontaigneRead
There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.
Michel De MontaigneRead
Those who have compared our life to a dream were right... we were sleeping wake, and waking sleep.
Michel De MontaigneRead
Such as are in immediate fear of a losing their estates, of banishment, or of slavery, live in perpetual anguish, and lose all appetite and repose; whereas such as are actually poor, slaves, or exiles, ofttimes live as merrily as other folk.
Michel De MontaigneRead

Similar quotes

When we oppose the hidden conscience, it does us hurt. When we betray it, it judges us.
Khalil GibranRead
As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.
Albert SchweitzerRead
Faith is not believing that God can, but that God will.
Abraham LincolnRead
In a state therefore of great equality and virtue, where pure and simple manners prevailed, the increase of the human species would evidently be much greater than any increase that has been hitherto known.
Thomas MalthusRead
Shrines! Shrines! Surely you don't believe in the gods. What's your argument? Where's your proof?
AristophanesRead
The influence of the senses have in men overpowered the thought to the degree that the walls of time and space have come to look solid, real and insurmountable. .. Yet time and space are but inverse measures of the power of the mind. Man is capable of abolishing them both.
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.