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Our wisdom and deliberation for the most part follow the lead of chance.
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
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Wisdom
Chance
Part
Deliberation
Lead
More quotes by Michel de Montaigne
Friendship is the highest degree of perfection in society.
Michel de Montaigne
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
I see this evident, that we willingly accord to piety only the services that flatter our passions.
Michel de Montaigne
No wonder, said an Ancient, that chance has so much power over us, since it is by chance that we live.
Michel de Montaigne
A man must either imitate the vicious or hate them.
Michel de Montaigne
Painting myself for others, I have painted my inward self with colors clearer than my original ones. I have no more made my book than my book has made me--a book consubstantial with its author, concerned with my own self, an integral part of my life not concerned with some third-hand, extraneous purpose, like all other books.
Michel de Montaigne
We seem ambitious God's whole work to undo. ...With new diseases on ourselves we war, And with new physic, a worse engine far.
Michel de Montaigne
Who is only good that others may know it, and that he may be the better esteemed when 'tis known, who will do well but upon condition that his virtue may be known to men, is one from whom much service is not to be expected.
Michel de Montaigne
In the examples that I here bring in of what I have [read], heard, done or said, I have refrained from daring to alter even the smallest and most indifferent circumstances. My conscience falsifies not an iota for my knowledge I cannot answer.
Michel de Montaigne
Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, inquiry the progress, ignorance the end.
Michel de Montaigne
If you have known how to compose your life, you have done a great deal more than the person who knows how to compose a book. You have done more than the one who has taken cities and empires.
Michel de Montaigne
Reason has so many forms that we do not know which to choose-Experiment has no fewer.
Michel de Montaigne
The entire lower world was created in the likeness of the higher world. All that exists in the higher world appears like an image in this lower world yet all this is but One.
Michel de Montaigne
The clatter of arms drowns out the voice of law.
Michel de Montaigne
There is some shadow of delight and delicacy which smiles upon and flatters us even in the very lap of melancholy.
Michel de Montaigne
I know that the arms of friendship are long enough to reach from the one end of the world to the other
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
The strength of any plan depends on the time. Circumstances and things eternally shift and change.
Michel de Montaigne
Who does not in some sort live to others, does not live much to himself.
Michel de Montaigne
An orator of past times declared that his calling was to make small things appear to be grand.
Michel de Montaigne
