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We have power over nothing except our will.

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
Except
Power
Nothing

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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Honesty is a question of right and wrong, not a matter of policy
Michel de Montaigne
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I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics.
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.
Michel de Montaigne
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It is no hard matter to get children but after they are born, then begins the trouble, solicitude, and care rightly to train, principle, and bring them up.
Michel de Montaigne
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We owe subjection and obedience to all our kings, whether good or bad, alike, for that has respect unto their office but as to esteem and affection, these are only due to their virtue.
Michel de Montaigne
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Socrates and then Archesilaus used to make their pupils speak first they spoke afterwards. 'Obest plerumque iss discere volunt authoritas eorum qui docent.' [For those who want to learn, the obstacle can often be the authority of those who teach]
Michel de Montaigne
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A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself.
Michel de Montaigne
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There is perhaps no more obvious vanity than to write of it so vainly.
Michel de Montaigne
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The finest lives in my opinion are the common model, without miracle and without extravagance.
Michel de Montaigne
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Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre of sentiment and resolution, in the suffering of human accidents.
Michel de Montaigne
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What kind of truth is it which has these mountains as its boundary and is a lie beyond them?
Michel de Montaigne
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We do not marry for ourselves, whatever we say we marry just as much or more for our posterity, for our family. The practice and benefit of marriage concerns our race very far beyond us.
Michel de Montaigne
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We find ourselves more taken with the running up and down, the games, and puerile simplicities of our children, than we do, afterward, with their most complete actions as if we had loved them for our sport, like monkeys, and not as men.
Michel de Montaigne
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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
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It is very easy to accuse a government of imperfection, for all mortal things are full of it.
Michel de Montaigne
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Socrates, who was a perfect model in all great qualities, ... hit on a body and face so ugly and so incongruous with the beauty of his soul, he who was so madly in love with beauty.
Michel de Montaigne
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Authors communicate with the people by some special extrinsic mark I am the first to do so by my entire being, as Michel de Montaigne.
Michel de Montaigne
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For among other things he had been counseled to bring me to love knowledge and duty by my own choice, without forcing my will, and to educate my soul entirely through gentleness and freedom.
Michel de Montaigne
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The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
Michel de Montaigne
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If I speak of myself in different ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways.
Michel de Montaigne