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Marriage can be compared to a cage: birds outside it despair to enter, and birds within, to escape.
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
Cages
Outside
Wedding
Marriage
Compared
Within
Birds
Enter
Escape
Despair
Cage
Bird
More quotes by Michel de Montaigne
I aim here only at revealing myself, who will perhaps be different tomorrow, if I learn something new which changes me.
Michel de Montaigne
Obstinacy and dogmatism are the surest signs of stupidity. Is there anything more confident, resolute, disdainful, grave and serious than an ass?
Michel de Montaigne
The shortest way to arrive at glory should be to do that for conscience which we do for glory. And the virtue of Alexander appears to me with much less vigor in his theater than that of Socrates in his mean and obscure. I can easily conceive Socrates in the place of Alexander, but Alexander in that of Socrates I cannot.
Michel de Montaigne
The height and value of true virtue consists in the facility, utility, and pleasure of its exercise so far from difficulty, that boys, as well as men, and the innocent as well as the subtle, may make it their own and it is by order and good conduct, and not by force, that it is to be acquired.
Michel de Montaigne
What am I to choose? Choose what you please, as long as you choose. There you have a foolish answer, which seems to be the outcome, however, of all Dogmatism, which will not allow us to be ignorant of that which we are ignorant.
Michel de Montaigne
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
Virtue shuns ease as a companion. It demands a rough and thorny path.
Michel de Montaigne
Some, either from being glued to vice by a natural attachment, or from long habit, no longer recognize its ugliness.
Michel de Montaigne
I am much afraid that we shall have very greatly hastened the decline and ruin of the New World by our contagion, and that we willhave sold it our opinions and our arts very dear.
Michel de Montaigne
Fortune does us neither good nor hurt she only presents us the matter, and the seed, which our soul, more powerfully than she, turns and applies as she best pleases being the sole cause and sovereign mistress of her own happy or unhappy condition.
Michel de Montaigne
A volunteer, you assign yourself specific roles and risks according to your judgement of their brilliance and importance, and you see when life itself may be justifiably devoted to them.
Michel de Montaigne
Thus we should beware of clinging to vulgar opinions, and judge things by reason's way, not by popular say.
Michel de Montaigne
I admire the assurance and confidence everyone has in himself, whereas there is hardly anything I am sure I know or that I dare give my word I can do.
Michel de Montaigne
It is fear that I stand most in fear of, in sharpness it exceeds every other feeling.
Michel de Montaigne
If my intentions were not to be read in my eyes and voice, I should not have survived so long without quarrels and without harm, seeing the indiscreet freedom with which I say, right or wrong, whatever comes into my head.
Michel de Montaigne
Some impose upon the world that they believe that which they do not others, more in number, make themselves believe that they believe, not being able to penetrate into what it is to believe.
Michel de Montaigne
We should be similarly wary of accepting common opinions we should judge them by the ways of reason not by popular vote.
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
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
A wise man loses nothing, if he but save himself.
Michel de Montaigne
