Quote

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
Pleasures
Consequence
Pleasure
Greater
Coveted
Pain
Terminate
Conceive
Pains
Avoided

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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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 is not necessity but abundance which produces greed.
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Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition.
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Knowledge is an excellent drug but no drug has virtue enough to preserve itself from corruption and decay, if the vessel be tainted and impure wherein it is put to keep.
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It is the mind that maketh good or ill, That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor.
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The confidence in another man's virtue is no light evidence of a man's own, and God willingly favors such a confidence.
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Men ... are not agreed about any one thing, not even that heaven is over our heads.
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How many quarrels, and how important, has the doubt as to the meaning of this syllable Hoc produced for the world!
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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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Other people do not see you at all, but guess at you by uncertain conjectures.
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If you don't know how to die, don't worry Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you don't bother your head about it.
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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
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The world is all a carcass and vanity, The shadow of a shadow, a play And in one word, just nothing.
Michel de Montaigne
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Can anything be imagined so ridiculous that this miserable and wretched creature, who is not so much as master of himself, but subject to the injuries of all things, should call himself master and emperor of the world, of which he has not power to know the least part, much less to command the whole?
Michel de Montaigne
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We trouble our life by thoughts about death, and our death by thoughts about life.
Michel de Montaigne
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To understand via the heart is not to understand.
Michel de Montaigne
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Let us a little permit nature to take her own way she better understands her own affairs than we.
Michel de Montaigne
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Every one is well or ill at ease, according as he finds himself! not he whom the world believes, but he who believes himself to be so, is content and in him alone belief gives itself being and reality
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Difficulty is a coin the learned make use of like jugglers, to conceal the inanity of their art.
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