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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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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
Whether
Reason
Find
Things
Ordinarily
Men
Eager
Libertarian
Discover
Knowledge

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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Intoxication is calculated to put heart into the elderly and give them delight in dancing.
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I find no quality so easy for a man to counterfeit as devotion, though his life and manner are not conformable to it the essence of it is abstruse and occult, but the appearances easy and showy.
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It takes so much to be a king that he exists only as such. That extraneous glare that surrounds him hides him and conceals him from us our sight breaks and is dissipated by it being filled and arrested by this strong light.
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It is a thorny undertaking, and more so than it seems, to follow a movement so wandering as that of our mind, to penetrate the opaque depths of its innermost folds, to pick out and immobilize the innumerable flutterings that agitate it.
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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.
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We must learn to suffer what we cannot evade.
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No spiritual mind remains within itself it is always aspiring and going beyond its own strength.
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We have so much ill fortune as inconstancy, or so much bad purpose as folly, we are not so full of evil as we are of inanity we are not so wretched as we are base
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To how many blockheads of my time has a cold and taciturn demeanor procured the credit of prudence and capacity!
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Make use of life while you have it. Whether you have lived enough depends upon yourself, not on the number of your years.
Michel de Montaigne
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Who is only good that others may know it, and that he may be the better esteemed when 'tis known, who will do well but upon condition that his virtue may be known to men, is one from whom much service is not to be expected.
Michel de Montaigne
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It is a disaster that wisdom forbids you to be satisfied with yourself and always sends you away dissatisfied and fearful, whereas stubbornness and foolhardiness fill their hosts with joy and assurance.
Michel de Montaigne
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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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It is in the enjoyment and not in mere possession that makes for happiness.
Michel de Montaigne
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All opinions in the world agree in this, that pleasure is our end, although they differ as to the means of attaining it.
Michel de Montaigne
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If you have known how to compose your life, you have done a great deal more than the person who knows how to compose a book. You have done more than the one who has taken cities and empires.
Michel de Montaigne
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The easy, gentle, and sloping path . . . is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road.
Michel de Montaigne
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It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.
Michel de Montaigne
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My errors are by now natural and incorrigible but the good that worthy men do the public by making themselves imitable, I shall perhaps do by making myself evitable.
Michel de Montaigne
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Whatever can be done another day can be done today.
Michel de Montaigne