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Let us not be ashamed to speak what we shame not to think.

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
Candor
Ashamed
Shame
Speak
Think

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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Marriage can be compared to a cage: birds outside it despair to enter, and birds within, to escape.
Michel de Montaigne
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I see men ordinarily more eager to discover a reason for things than to find out whether the things are so.
Michel de Montaigne
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Children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.
Michel de Montaigne
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In my opinion, every rich man is a miser.
Michel de Montaigne
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The day of your birth leads you to death as well as to life.
Michel de Montaigne
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It is a human tendency to measure truth and error by our capacity.
Michel de Montaigne
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Every one's true worship was that which he found in use in the place where he chanced to be.
Michel de Montaigne
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In my opinion, the most fruitful and natural play of the mind is conversation. I find it sweeter than any other action in life and if I were forced to choose, I think I would rather lose my sight than my hearing and voice. The study of books is a drowsy and feeble exercise which does not warm you up.
Michel de Montaigne
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To understand via the heart is not to understand.
Michel de Montaigne
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Judgement can do without knowledge: but not knowledge without judgement.
Michel de Montaigne
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I am disgusted with innovation, in whatever guise, and with reason, for I have seen very harmful effects of it.
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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Have you been able to think out and manage your own life? You have done the greatest task of all.... All other things, ruling, hoarding, building, are only little appendages and props, at most.
Michel de Montaigne
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To speak less of oneself than what one really is, is folly, not modesty and to take that for current pay which is under a man's value, is pusillanimity and cowardice.
Michel de Montaigne
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I look upon the too good opinion that man has of himself, as the nursing mother of all false opinions, both public and private.
Michel de Montaigne
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Dreams are faithful interpreters of our inclinations but there is art required to sort and understand them.
Michel de Montaigne
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I have seen people rude by being over-polite.
Michel de Montaigne
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Nothing else but an insatiate thirst of enjoying a greedily desired object.
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.
Michel de Montaigne
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Not because Socrates said so, but because it is in truth my own disposition — and perchance to some excess — I look upon all men as my compatriots, and embrace a Pole as a Frenchman, making less account of the national than of the universal and common bond.
Michel de Montaigne