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There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.
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
Much
Managing
Private
Entire
State
Less
Family
States
Government
Vexation
More quotes by Michel de Montaigne
~The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them ~
Michel de Montaigne
To make a crooked stick straight, we bend it the contrary way.
Michel de Montaigne
Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages.
Michel de Montaigne
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
I do not correct my first imaginings by my second--well, yes, perhaps a word or so, but only to vary, not to delete. I want to represent the course of my humors and I want people to see each part at its birth.
Michel de Montaigne
In plain Truth, it is no Want, but rather Abundance that creates Avarice.
Michel de Montaigne
Seeing that the Senses cannot decide our dispute, being themselves full of uncertainty, we must have recourse to Reason there is no reason but must be built upon another reason: so here we are retreating backwards to infinity.
Michel de Montaigne
One should always have one's boots on and be ready to leave.
Michel de Montaigne
The share we have in the knowledge of truth, such as it is, has not been acquired by our own powers. God has taught ushis wonderful secrets our faith is not of our acquiring, it is purely the gift of another's bounty.
Michel de Montaigne
If faces were not alike, we could not distinguish men from beasts if they were not different, we could not tell one man from another.
Michel de Montaigne
Virtue rejects facility to be her companion. She requires a craggy, rough and thorny way.
Michel de Montaigne
Reason has so many forms that we do not know which to choose-Experiment has no fewer.
Michel de Montaigne
The easy, gentle, and sloping path . . . is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road.
Michel de Montaigne
We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.
Michel de Montaigne
How often our involuntary facial motions testify to the thoughts we were keeping secret, and betray us to those around!
Michel de Montaigne
It should be noted that children at play are not playing about their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity.
Michel de Montaigne
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
If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not even think of themselves.
Michel de Montaigne
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
The most ordinary things, the most common and familiar, if we could see them in their true light, would turn out to be the grandest miracles.
Michel de Montaigne
