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If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not even think of themselves.

Michel de Montaigne

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Michel de Montaigne
Age: 59 †
Born: 1533
Born: February 28
Died: 1592
Died: September 13
Autobiographer
Essayist
French Moralist
Jurist
Philosopher
Poet Lawyer
Politician
Translator
Writer
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
Miquèu Eiquèm de Montanha
Miqueu Eiquem de Montanha
Thinking
People
Complain
Complaining
Ordinary
Speak
Even
Much
Think

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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It is not my deeds that I write down, it is myself, my essence.
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The relish of good and evil depends in a great measure upon the opinion we have of them.
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Physicians have this advantage: the sun lights their success and the earth covers their failures.
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A man never speaks of himself without losing something. What he says in his disfavor is always beleived, but when he commends himself, he arouses mistrust.
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And not to serve for a table-talk.
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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.
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It is an absolute perfection... to get the very most out of one's individuality.
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God defend me from being an honest man according to the description which every day I see made by each man to his own glorification
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We find ourselves more taken with the running up and down, the games, and puerile simplicities of our children, than we do, afterward, with their most complete actions as if we had loved them for our sport, like monkeys, and not as men.
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We have so much ill fortune as inconstancy, or so much bad purpose as folly, we are not so full of evil as we are of inanity we are not so wretched as we are base
Michel de Montaigne
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Is there anything so grave and serious as an ass?
Michel de Montaigne
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Persons of mean understandings, not so inquisitive, nor so well instructed, are made good Christians, and by reverence and obedience, implicity believe, and abide by their belief.
Michel de Montaigne
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Death pays all debts.
Michel de Montaigne
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The pleasantest things in the world are pleasant thoughts, and the great art of life is to have as many of them as possible.
Michel de Montaigne
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A hair shirt does not always render those chaste who wear it.
Michel de Montaigne
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I go out of my way, but rather by license than carelessness.... It is the inattentive reader who loses my subject, not I. Some word about it will always be found off in a corner, which will not fail to be sufficient, though it takes little room.
Michel de Montaigne
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The curiosity of knowing things has been given to man for a scourge.
Michel de Montaigne
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I have never observed other effects of whipping than to render boys more cowardly, or more willfully obstinate.
Michel de Montaigne
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We must not attach knowledge to the mind, we have to incorporate it there.
Michel de Montaigne
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Each person calls barbarism whatever is not his or her own practice.... We may call Cannibals barbarians, in respect to the rulesof reason, but not in respect to ourselves, who surpass them in every kind of barbarity.
Michel de Montaigne