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I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided if greater pains be the consequence, and pains to be coveted that will terminate in greater pleasures.

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
Pains
Avoided
Pleasures
Consequence
Pleasure
Greater
Coveted
Pain
Terminate
Conceive

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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The day of your birth leads you to death as well as to life.
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An orator of past times declared that his calling was to make small things appear to be grand.
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The pleasure we hold in esteem for the course of our lives ought to have a greater share of our time dedicated to it we should refuse no occasion nor omit any opportunity of drinking, and always have it in our minds.
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We feel a kind of bittersweet pricking of malicious delight in contemplating the misfortunes of others.
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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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A woman is no sooner ours than we are no longer hers.
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Malice sucks up the greatest part of its own venom, and poisons itself.
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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.
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In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page- boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk - they are all part of the curriculum.
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It is an injustice that an old, broken, half-dead father should enjoy alone, in a corner of his hearth, possessions that would suffice for the advancement and maintenance of many children.
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Have you been able to think out and manage your own life? You have done the greatest task of all.... All other things, ruling, hoarding, building, are only little appendages and props, at most.
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We are all patchwork, and so shapeless and diverse in composition that each bit, each moment, plays its own game.
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It is a human tendency to measure truth and error by our capacity.
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I cruelly hate cruelty, both by nature and reason, as the worst of all the vices. But then I am so soft in this that I cannot seea chicken's neck wrung without distress, and cannot bear to hear the squealing of a hare between the teeth of my hounds.
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I speak the truth, not my fill of it, but as much as I dare speak and I dare to do so a little more as I grow old.
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Courtesy is a science of the highest importance. It is...opening a door that we may derive instruction from the example of others, and at the same time enabling us to benefit them by our example, if there be anything in our character worthy of imitation.
Michel de Montaigne
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Examples teach us that in military affairs, and all others of a like nature, study is apt to enervate and relax the courage of man, rather than to give strength and energy to the mind.
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The perpetual work of your life is but to lay the foundation of death.
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We do not correct the man we hang we correct others by him.
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A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself.
Michel de Montaigne