Quote

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

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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
Years
Lived
Make
Number
Life
Depends
Numbers
Whether
Upon
Use
Enough

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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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
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Teach him a certain refinement in sorting out and selecting his arguments, with an affection for relevance and so for brevity. Above all let him be taught to throw down his arms and surrender to truth as soon as he perceives it, whether the truth is born at his rival's doing or within himself from some change in his ideas.
Michel de Montaigne
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Glory consists of two parts: the one in setting too great a value upon ourselves, and the other in setting too little a value upon others.
Michel de Montaigne
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If health and a fair day smile upon me, I am a very good fellow if a corn trouble my toe, I am sullen, out of humor, and inaccessible.
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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The great and glorious masterpiece of men is to live to the point. All other things-to reign, to hoard, to build-are, at most, but inconsiderable props and appendages.
Michel de Montaigne
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So it is with minds. Unless you keep them busy with some definite subject that will bridle and control them, they throw themselves in disorder hither and yon in the vague field of imagination... And there is no mad or idle fancy that they do not bring forth in the agitation.
Michel de Montaigne
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I cruelly hate cruelty, both by nature and reason, as the worst of all the vices. But then I am so soft in this that I cannot seea chicken's neck wrung without distress, and cannot bear to hear the squealing of a hare between the teeth of my hounds.
Michel de Montaigne
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I have gathered a posy of other men’s flowers and only the thread that bonds them is my own.
Michel de Montaigne
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The only good histories are those written by those who had command in the events they describe.
Michel de Montaigne
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Nature clasps all her creatures in a universal embrace there is not one of them which she has not plainly furnished with all means necessary to the conservation of its being.
Michel de Montaigne
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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
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I go out of my way, but rather by license than carelessness.... It is the inattentive reader who loses my subject, not I. Some word about it will always be found off in a corner, which will not fail to be sufficient, though it takes little room.
Michel de Montaigne
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Children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.
Michel de Montaigne
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We call comeliness a mischance in the first respect, which belongs principally to the face.
Michel de Montaigne
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Is there anything so grave and serious as an ass?
Michel de Montaigne
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Others form man I tell of him, and portray a particular one, very ill-formed, whom I should really make very different from whathe is if I had to fashion him over again. But now it is done.
Michel de Montaigne
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If others examined themselves attentively, as I do, they would find themselves, as I do, full of inanity and nonsense. Get rid of it I cannot without getting rid of myself.
Michel de Montaigne
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I may indeed very well happen to contradict myself but truth, as Demades said, I do not contradict.
Michel de Montaigne
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We need to interpret interpretations more than to interpret things.
Michel de Montaigne