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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
Marriage
Wedding
Within
Compared
Birds
Enter
Escape
Despair
Bird
Cage
Outside
Cages
More quotes by Michel de Montaigne
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.
Michel de Montaigne
Men are tormented by the opinions they have of things, and not the things themselves.
Michel de Montaigne
But the touch or company of any man whatsoever stirreth up their heat, which in their solitude was hushed and quiet, and lay as cinders raked up in ashes.
Michel de Montaigne
Laws are often made by fools, and even more often by men who fail in equity because they hate equality: but always by men, vain authorities who can resolve nothing.
Michel de Montaigne
Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.
Michel de Montaigne
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
I aim here only at revealing myself, who will perhaps be different tomorrow, if I learn something new which changes me.
Michel de Montaigne
Repentance is no other than a recanting of the will, and opposition to our fancies, which lead us which way they please.
Michel de Montaigne
Now, since everything else is furnished with the exact amount of needle and thread required to maintain its being, it is in truth incredible that we alone should be brought into the world in a defective and indigent state, in a state such that we cannot maintain ourselves without external aid.
Michel de Montaigne
If love and ambition should be in equal balance, and come to jostle with equal force, I make no doubt but that the last would win the prize.
Michel de Montaigne
It is not a mind, it is not a body that we educate, but it is a man, and we must not make two parts of him.
Michel de Montaigne
The strength of any plan depends on the time. Circumstances and things eternally shift and change.
Michel de Montaigne
A man may be humble through vainglory.
Michel de Montaigne
If these Essays were worthy of being judged, it might fall out, in my opinion, that they would not find much favour, either with common and vulgar minds, or with uncommon and eminent ones: the former would not find enough in them, the latter would find too much they might manage to live somewhere in the middle region.
Michel de Montaigne
Lay a beam between these two towers of such width as we need to walk on: there is no philosophical wisdom of such great firmness that it can give us courage to walk on it as we should if it were on the ground.
Michel de Montaigne
It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness.
Michel de Montaigne
Every man may speak truly, but to speak methodically, prudently, and fully is a talent that few men have.
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 knowledge of courtesy and good manners is a very necessary study. It is like grace and beauty, that which begets liking and an inclination to love one another at the first sight.
Michel de Montaigne
I want death to find me planting my cabbages, but careless of death, and still more of my unfinished garden.
Michel de Montaigne
