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Obstinacy and contention are common qualities, most appearing in, and best becoming, a mean and illiterate soul.

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
Best
Obstinacy
Soul
Contention
Mean
Illiterate
Appearing
Qualities
Becoming
Quality
Common

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A man may be humble through vainglory.
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The world is but a perennial movement. All things in it are in constant motion-the earth, the rocks of the Caucasus, the pyramids of Egypt-both with the common motion and with their own.
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All other knowledge is hurtful to him who has not honesty and good-nature
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It needs courage to be afraid.
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Marriage, a market which has nothing free but the entrance.
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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.
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A good marriage ... is a sweet association in life: full of constancy, trust, and an infinite number of useful and solid services and mutual obligations.
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Oh, what a valiant faculty is hope.
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Persons of mean understandings, not so inquisitive, nor so well instructed, are made good Christians, and by reverence and obedience, implicity believe, and abide by their belief.
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If I were a maker of books I should compile a register, with comments, of different deaths. He who should teach people to die, would teach them to live.
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Vexations may be petty, but they are vexations still.
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One may be humble out of pride.
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A man must keep a little back shop where he can be himself without reserve. In solitude alone can he know true freedom.
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No spiritual mind remains within itself it is always aspiring and going beyond its own strength.
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Time steals away without any inconvenience.
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This idea is more surely understood by interrogation WHAT DO I KNOW? which I bear as my motto with the emblem of a pair of scales.
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We do not marry for ourselves, whatever we say we marry just as much or more for our posterity, for our family. The practice and benefit of marriage concerns our race very far beyond us.
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All opinions in the world agree in this, that pleasure is our end, although they differ as to the means of attaining it.
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Excellent memories are often coupled with feeble judgments.
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Ambition is not a vice of little people.
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