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For table-talk, I prefer the pleasant and witty before the learned and the grave in bed, beauty before goodness.

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
Bed
Goodness
Grave
Conversation
Witty
Learned
Graves
Beauty
Prefer
Talk
Table
Pleasant
Tables

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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I love those historians that are either very simple or most excellent. Such as are between both (which is the most common fashion), it is they that spoil all they will needs chew our meat for us and take upon them a law to judge, and by consequence to square and incline the story according to their fantasy.
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It is not my deeds that I write down, it is myself, my essence.
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And obstinacy is the sister of constancy, at least in vigour and stability.
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After a tongue has once got the knack of lying, it is not to be imagined how impossible almost it is to reclaim it. Whence it comes to pass, that we see some men, who are otherwise very honest, so subject to this vice.
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I consider myself an average man, except in the fact that I consider myself an average man.
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The worthiest man to be known, and for a pattern to be presented to the world, he is the man of whom we have most certain knowledge. He hath been declared and enlightened by the most clear-seeing men that ever were the testimonies we have of him are in faithfulness and sufficiency most admirable.
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The most fruitful and natural exercise for our minds is, in my opinion, conversation.
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A woman is no sooner ours than we are no longer hers.
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Order a purge for your brain, it will there be much better employed than upon your stomach.
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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.
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He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.
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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.
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To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquillity in our conduct.
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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.
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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.
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What kind of truth is it which has these mountains as its boundary and is a lie beyond them?
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There is some shadow of delight and delicacy which smiles upon and flatters us even in the very lap of melancholy.
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Knowledge is an excellent drug but no drug has virtue enough to preserve itself from corruption and decay, if the vessel be tainted and impure wherein it is put to keep.
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If you don't know how to die, don't worry Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you don't bother your head about it.
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Getting married is very much like going to a restaurant with friends. You order what you want then when you see what the other person has, you wish you had ordered that.
Michel de Montaigne