Quote

We seem ambitious God's whole work to undo. ...With new diseases on ourselves we war, And with new physic, a worse engine far.

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
Undo
War
Engine
Diseases
Seems
Engines
Whole
Ambitious
Work
Ambition
Worse
Disease
Physic

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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There is no wish more natural than the wish to know.
Michel de Montaigne
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I see this evident, that we willingly accord to piety only the services that flatter our passions.
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My library is my kingdom, and here I try to make my rule absolute-shutting off this single nook from wife, daughter and society. Elsewhere I have only a verbal authority, and vague. Unhappy is the man, in my opinion, who has no spot at home where he can be at home to himself-to court himself and hide away.
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That is why Bias jested with those who were going through the perils of a great storm with him and calling on the gods for help: Shut up, he said, so that they do not realize that you are here with me.
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Once you have decided to keep a certain pile, it is no longer yours for you can't spend it.
Michel de Montaigne
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We cannot fail in following nature.
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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
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Poverty of goods is easily cured poverty of soul, impossible.
Michel de Montaigne
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It has never occurred to me to wish for empire or royalty, nor for the eminence of those high and commanding fortunes. My aim lies not in that direction I love myself too well.
Michel de Montaigne
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We are more solicitous that men speak of us, than how they speak.
Michel de Montaigne
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The archer who overshoots his mark does no better than he who falls short of it.
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A foreign war is a lot milder than a civil war.
Michel de Montaigne
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Any person of honor chooses rather to lose his honor than to lose his conscience.
Michel de Montaigne
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There is nothing which so poisons princes as flattery, nor anything whereby wicked men more easily obtain credit and favor with them.
Michel de Montaigne
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We call comeliness a mischance in the first respect, which belongs principally to the face.
Michel de Montaigne
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In my opinion it is the happy living, and not, as Antisthenes said, the happy lying, in which human happiness consists.
Michel de Montaigne
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I have here only made a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the thread that tied them together.
Michel de Montaigne
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It is very easy to accuse a government of imperfection, for all mortal things are full of it.
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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Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.
Michel de Montaigne