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Michel de Montaigne -
Essays (1580)
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For there is no air that men so greedily draw in, that diffuses itself so soon, and that penetrates so deep as that of license.
Michel de Montaigne
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Amongst all other vices there is none I hate more than cruelty, both by nature and judgment, as the extremest of all vices.
Michel de Montaigne
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Presumption is our natural and original malady. The most vulnerable and frail of all creatures is man, and at the same time the most arrogant.
Michel de Montaigne
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The common notions that we find in credit around us and infused into our souls by our fathers' seed, these seem to be the universal and natural ones. Whence it comes to pass that what is off the hinges of custom, people believe to be off the hinges of reason.
Michel de Montaigne
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A volunteer, you assign yourself specific roles and risks according to your judgement of their brilliance and importance, and you see when life itself may be justifiably devoted to them.
Michel de Montaigne
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Who is it that does not voluntarily exchange his health, his repose, and his very life for reputation and glory? The most useless, frivolous, and false coin that passes current among us.
Michel de Montaigne
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Nature has made us a present of a broad capacity for entertaining ourselves apart, and often calls us to do so, to teach us that we owe ourselves in part to society, but in the best part to ourselves.
Michel de Montaigne
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The most beautiful lives, to my mind, are those that conform to the common human pattern, with order, but without miracle and without eccentricity.
Michel de Montaigne
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Whoever will imagine a perpetual confession of ignorance, a judgment without leaning or inclination, on any occasion whatever, hasa conception of Pyrrhonism.
Michel de Montaigne
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Glory and repose are things that cannot possibly inhabit in one and the same place.
Michel de Montaigne
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I seek in the reading of books, only to please myself, by an honest diversion.
Michel de Montaigne
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To honor him whom we have made is far from honoring him that hath made us.
Michel de Montaigne
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What we are told of the inhabitants of Brazil, that they never die but of old age, is attributed to the tranquility and serenity of their climate; I rather attribute it to the tranquility and serenity of their souls, which are free from all passion, thought, or any absorbing and unpleasant labors. Those people spend their lives in an admirable simplicity and ignorance, without letters, without law, without king, without any manner of religion.
Michel de Montaigne
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He who does not live in some degree for others, hardly lives for himself.
Michel de Montaigne
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For table-talk, I prefer the pleasant and witty before the learned and the grave; in bed, beauty before goodness.
Michel de Montaigne
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Our truth of nowadays is not what is, but what others can be convinced of; just as we call "money" not only that which is legal, but also any counterfeit that will pass.
Michel de Montaigne
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Nature has with a Motherly Tenderness observed this, that the Action she has enjoyned us for our Necessity should be also pleasant to us, and invites us to them, not only by Reason, but also by Appetite: and tis Injustice to infringe her Laws.
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Friendship that possesses the whole soul, and there rules and sways with an absolute sovereignty, can admit of no rival.
Michel de Montaigne
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To say less of yourself than is true is stupidity, not modesty. To pay yourself less than you are worth is cowardice and pusillanimity.
Michel de Montaigne
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Who ever saw a doctor use the prescription of his colleague without cutting out or adding something?
Michel de Montaigne
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If I am to serve as an instrument of deceit, at least let it be with a clear conscience. I do not want to be considered either so affectionate or so loyal a servant as to be found fit to betray anyone.
Michel de Montaigne
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Virtue cannot be followed but for herself, and if one sometimes borrows her mask to some other purpose, she presently pulls it away again.
Michel de Montaigne
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Pride dwells in the thought; the tongue can have but a very little share in it.
Michel de Montaigne
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The plague of man is the opinion of knowledge. That is why ignorance is so recommended by our religion as a quality suitable to belief and obedience.
Michel de Montaigne
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There is the name and the thing; the name is a sound which sets a mark on and denotes the thing. The name is no part of the thing nor of the substance; it is an extraneous piece added to the thing, and outside of it.
Michel de Montaigne
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Quote of the day
Ultimately, America's answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.
Robert F. Kennedy
Michel de Montaigne
Creative Commons
Born:
February 28, 1533
Died:
September 13, 1592
(aged 59)
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