Quote

It takes so much to be a king that he exists only as such. That extraneous glare that surrounds him hides him and conceals him from us our sight breaks and is dissipated by it being filled and arrested by this strong light.

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
Much
Kings
Glare
Sight
Surrounds
Filled
Hides
Takes
Arrested
Break
Breaks
Existence
Surround
Dissipated
Strong
Exists
Extraneous
Light
King
Conceals

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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Cowardice is the mother of cruelty.
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The common notions that we find in credit around us and infused into our souls by our fathers' seed, these seem to be the universal and natural ones. Whence it comes to pass that what is off the hinges of custom, people believe to be off the hinges of reason.
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Poetry reproduces an indefinable mood that is more amorous than love itself. Venus is not so beautiful all naked, alive, and panting, as she is here in Virgil.
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No two men ever judged alike of the same thing, and it is impossible to find two opinions exactly similar, not only in different men but in the same men at different times.
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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.
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Every man has within himself the entire human condition
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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Since philosophy is the art which teaches us how to live, and since children need to learn it as much as we do at other ages, why do we not instruct them in it?
Michel de Montaigne
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A person is bound to lose when he talks about himself if he belittles himself, he is believed if he praises himself, he isn't believed.
Michel de Montaigne
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All we do is to look after the opinions and learning of others: we ought to make them our own.
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To honor him whom we have made is far from honoring him that hath made us.
Michel de Montaigne
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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.
Michel de Montaigne
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Things are not bad in themselves, but our cowardice makes them so.
Michel de Montaigne
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I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided if greater pains be the consequence, and pains to be coveted that will terminate in greater pleasures.
Michel de Montaigne
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Virtue cannot be followed but for herself, and if one sometimes borrows her mask to some other purpose, she presently pulls it away again.
Michel de Montaigne
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I love a friendship that flatters itself in the sharpness and vigor of its communications.
Michel de Montaigne
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Obsession is the wellspring of genius and madness.
Michel de Montaigne
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Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages.
Michel de Montaigne
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~The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them ~
Michel de Montaigne
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Some, either from being glued to vice by a natural attachment, or from long habit, no longer recognize its ugliness.
Michel de Montaigne