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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

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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
Known
Persons
Person
Compose
Book
Empires
Done
Deal
Great
Deals
Life
Cities
Taken

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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In his commerce with men I mean him to include- and that principally- those who live only in the memory of books. By means of history he will frequent those great souls of former years. If you want it to be so, history can be a waste of time it can also be, if you want it to be so, a study bearing fruit beyond price.
Michel de Montaigne
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Those who give the first shock to a state are the first overwhelmed in its ruin the fruits of public commotion are seldom enjoyed by him who was the first mover he only beats the water for another's net.
Michel de Montaigne
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We may so seize on virtue, that if we embrace it with an overgreedy and violent desire, it may become vicious.
Michel de Montaigne
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I must use these great men's virtues as a cloak for my weakness.
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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One man may have some special knowledge at first-hand about the character of a river or a spring, who otherwise knows only what everyone else knows. Yet to give currency to this shred of information, he will undertake to write on the whole science of physics. From this fault many great troubles spring.
Michel de Montaigne
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We are more solicitous that men speak of us, than how they speak.
Michel de Montaigne
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How often, being moved under a false cause, if the person offending makes a good defense and presents us with a just excuse, are we angry against truth and innocence itself?
Michel de Montaigne
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Habit is a second nature.
Michel de Montaigne
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We should spread joy, but, as far as we can, repress sorrow.
Michel de Montaigne
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I see several animals that live so entire and perfect a life, some without sight, others without hearing: who knows whether to us also one, two, or three, or many other senses, may not be wanting?
Michel de Montaigne
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I look upon the too good opinion that man has of himself, as the nursing mother of all false opinions, both public and private.
Michel de Montaigne
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How often our involuntary facial motions testify to the thoughts we were keeping secret, and betray us to those around!
Michel de Montaigne
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We must not attach knowledge to the mind, we have to incorporate it there.
Michel de Montaigne
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The continuous work of our life is to build death.
Michel de Montaigne
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The plague of man is the opinion of knowledge. That is why ignorance is so recommended by our religion as a quality suitable to belief and obedience.
Michel de Montaigne
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The first lessons with which we should irrigate his mind should be those which teach him to know himself, and to know how to die ... and to live.
Michel de Montaigne
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To smell, though well, is to stink.
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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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