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The worst of my actions or conditions seem not so ugly unto me as I find it both ugly and base not to dare to avouch for them.

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
Seem
Worst
Confession
Action
Unto
Seems
Base
Find
Dare
Actions
Ugly
Conditions

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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I am further of opinion that it would be better for us to have [no laws] at all than to have them in so prodigious numbers as we have.
Michel de Montaigne
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What am I to choose? Choose what you please, as long as you choose. There you have a foolish answer, which seems to be the outcome, however, of all Dogmatism, which will not allow us to be ignorant of that which we are ignorant.
Michel de Montaigne
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Is it reasonable that even the arts should take advantage of and profit by our natural stupidity and feebleness of mind?
Michel de Montaigne
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We are all patchwork, and so shapeless and diverse in composition that each bit, each moment, plays its own game.
Michel de Montaigne
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Every man has within himself the entire human condition
Michel de Montaigne
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The beginnings of all things are weak and tender. We must therefore be clear-sighted in the beginnings, for, as in their budding we discern not the danger, so in their full growth we perceive not the remedy.
Michel de Montaigne
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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.
Michel de Montaigne
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I am afraid that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, and that we have more curiosity than understanding. We grasp at everything, but catch nothing except wind.
Michel de Montaigne
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The world is all a carcass and vanity, The shadow of a shadow, a play And in one word, just nothing.
Michel de Montaigne
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'As a man who knows how to make his education into a rule of life not a means of showing off who can control himself and obey his own principles.' The true mirror of our discourse is the course of our lives.
Michel de Montaigne
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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
Michel de Montaigne
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Fortune does us neither good nor hurt she only presents us the matter, and the seed, which our soul, more powerfully than she, turns and applies as she best pleases being the sole cause and sovereign mistress of her own happy or unhappy condition.
Michel de Montaigne
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This notion [skepticism] is more clearly understood by asking What do I know?
Michel de Montaigne
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Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves by railing at it and yet it is not absolutely railing against anything, to proclaim its defects, because they are in all things to be found, how beautiful or how much to be coveted soever.
Michel de Montaigne
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Every movement reveals us.
Michel de Montaigne
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We are born to inquire after truth it belongs to a greater power to possess it. It is not, as Democritus said, hid in the bottom of the deeps, but rather elevated to an infinite height in the divine knowledge.
Michel de Montaigne
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It is the part of cowardice, not of courage, to go and crouch in a hole under a massive tomb, to avoid the blows of fortune.
Michel de Montaigne
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I honor most those to whom I show least honor and where my soul moves with great alacrity, I forget the proper steps of ceremony.
Michel de Montaigne
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Things are not bad in themselves, but our cowardice makes them so.
Michel de Montaigne
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Seneca's virtue shows forth so live and vigorous in his writings, and the defense is so clear there against some of these imputations, as that of his wealth and excessive spending, that I would not believe any testimony to the contrary.
Michel de Montaigne