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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
Mean
Illiterate
Appearing
Qualities
Becoming
Quality
Common
Best
Obstinacy
Soul
Contention

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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We should be similarly wary of accepting common opinions we should judge them by the ways of reason not by popular vote.
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It is not a mind, it is not a body that we educate, but it is a man, and we must not make two parts of him.
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The thing I fear most is fear.
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I must accommodate my history to the hour: I may presently change, not only by fortune, but also by intention.
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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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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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The truth of these days is not that which really is, but what every man persuades another man to believe.
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Every one's true worship was that which he found in use in the place where he chanced to be.
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Seeing that the Senses cannot decide our dispute, being themselves full of uncertainty, we must have recourse to Reason there is no reason but must be built upon another reason: so here we are retreating backwards to infinity.
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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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Authors communicate with the people by some special extrinsic mark I am the first to do so by my entire being, as Michel de Montaigne.
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He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.
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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.
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He that I am reading seems always to have the most force.
Michel de Montaigne
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As far as I am concerned, no road that would lead us to health is either arduous or expensive.
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We call comeliness a mischance in the first respect, which belongs principally to the face.
Michel de Montaigne
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Travelling through the world produces a marvellous clarity in the judgment of men. We are all of us confined and enclosed within ourselves, and see no farther than the end of our nose.
Michel de Montaigne
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In my opinion, the most fruitful and natural play of the mind is conversation. I find it sweeter than any other action in life and if I were forced to choose, I think I would rather lose my sight than my hearing and voice. The study of books is a drowsy and feeble exercise which does not warm you up.
Michel de Montaigne
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Learning is a good medicine: but no medicine is powerful enough to preserve itself from taint and corruption independently of defects in the jar that it is kept in. One man sees clearly but does not see straight: consequently he sees what is good but fails to follow it he sees knowledge and does not use it.
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Ceremony forbids us to express by words things that are lawful and natural, and we obey it reason forbids us to do things unlawful and ill, and nobody obeys it.
Michel de Montaigne