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Princes give mee sufficiently, if they take nothing from me, and doe me much good, if they doe me no hurt: it is all I require of them.

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
Good
Sufficiently
Require
Hurt
Give
Nothing
Take
Giving
Princes
Much
Royalty

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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What fear has once made me will, I am bound still to will when without fear.
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The worst of my actions or conditions seem not so ugly unto me as I find it both ugly and base not to dare to avouch for them.
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He that had never seen a river, imagined the first he met with to be the sea.
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If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because it was I.
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Ambition sufficiently plagues her proselytes, by keeping themselves always in show, like the statue of a public place.
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There is nothing so extreme that is not allowed by the custom of some nation or other.
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Behold the hands, how they promise, conjure, appeal, menace, pray, supplicate, refuse, beckon, interrogate, admire, confess, cringe, instruct, command, mock and what not besides, with a variation and multiplication of variation which makes the tongue envious.
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I see this evident, that we willingly accord to piety only the services that flatter our passions.
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People of our time are so formed for agitation and ostentation that goodness, moderation, equability, constancy, and such quiet and obscure qualities are no longer felt.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Not because Socrates said so, but because it is in truth my own disposition — and perchance to some excess — I look upon all men as my compatriots, and embrace a Pole as a Frenchman, making less account of the national than of the universal and common bond.
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Why dost thou complain of this world? It detains thee not thy own cowardice is the cause, if thou livest in pain.
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Socrates thought and so do I that the wisest theory about the gods is no theory at all.
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Have you known how to take rest? You have done more than he who hath taken empires and cities.
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Friendship that possesses the whole soul, and there rules and sways with an absolute sovereignty, can admit of no rival.
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Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, inquiry the progress, ignorance the end.
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Our truth of nowadays is not what is, but what others can be convinced of just as we call money not only that which is legal, but also any counterfeit that will pass.
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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