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There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom.

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
Private
Trouble
Parent
Less
Family
Littles
Governing
Little
Kingdom
Whole
Kingdoms

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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And truly Philosophy is but sophisticated poetry. Whence do those ancient writers derive all their authority but from the poets?
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Oh senseless man, who cannot possibly make a worm or a flea and yet will create Gods by the dozen!
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Men are nothing until they are excited.
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... whoever believes anything esteems that it is a work of charity to persuade another of it.
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It is far more probable that our senses should deceive us, than that an old woman should be carried up a chimney on a broom stick and that it is far less astonishing that witnesses should lie, than that witches should perform the acts that were alleged.
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Others form man I tell of him, and portray a particular one, very ill-formed, whom I should really make very different from whathe is if I had to fashion him over again. But now it is done.
Michel de Montaigne
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There is a huge gulf between the man who follows the conventions and laws of his country and the man who sets out to regiment them and to change them.
Michel de Montaigne
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A man should think less of what he eats and more with whom he eats because no food is so satisfying as good company.
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 have gathered a posy of other men’s flowers and only the thread that bonds them is my own.
Michel de Montaigne
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Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.
Michel de Montaigne
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Human wisdom makes as ill use of her talent when she exercises it in rescinding from the number and sweetness of those pleasures that are naturally our due, as she employs it favorably and well in artificially disguising and tricking out the ills of life to alleviate the sense of them.
Michel de Montaigne
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Plenty and indigence depend upon the opinion every one has of them and riches, like glory of health, have no more beauty or pleasure than their possessor is pleaded to lend them.
Michel de Montaigne
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Valor is strength, not of legs and arms, but of heart and soul it consists not in the worth of our horse or our weapons, but in our own.
Michel de Montaigne
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[Marriage] happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.
Michel de Montaigne
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There is, nevertheless, a certain respect and a general duty of humanity that ties us, not only to beasts that have life and sense, but even to trees and plants.
Michel de Montaigne
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Order a purge for your brain, it will there be much better employed than upon your stomach.
Michel de Montaigne
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Our zeal works wonders, whenever it supports our inclination toward hatred, cruelty, ambition.
Michel de Montaigne
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Books are pleasant, but if by being over-studious we impair our health and spoil our good humour, two of the best things we have, let us give it over. I, for my part, am one of those who think no fruit derived from them can recompense so great a loss.
Michel de Montaigne
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I love those historians that are either very simple or most excellent. Such as are between both (which is the most common fashion), it is they that spoil all they will needs chew our meat for us and take upon them a law to judge, and by consequence to square and incline the story according to their fantasy.
Michel de Montaigne