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It is the part of cowardice, not of courage, to go and crouch in a hole under a massive tomb, to avoid the blows of fortune.

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
Fortune
Tombs
Courage
Blows
Part
Cowardice
Hole
Massive
Holes
Avoid
Crouch
Blow
Tomb

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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The good, supreme, divine poetry is above the rules and reason. Whoever discerns its beauty with a firm, sedate gaze does not see it, any more than he sees the splendor of a lightning flash. It does not persuade our judgement, it ravishes and overwhelms it.
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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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An orator of past times declared that his calling was to make small things appear to be grand.
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Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.
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A hair shirt does not always render those chaste who wear it.
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This notion [skepticism] is more clearly understood by asking What do I know?
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Men of simple understanding, little inquisitive and little instructed, make good Christians.
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Fortune does us neither good nor hurt she only presents us the matter, and the seed, which our soul, more powerfully than she, turns and applies as she best pleases being the sole cause and sovereign mistress of her own happy or unhappy condition.
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The confidence in another man's virtue is no light evidence of a man's own, and God willingly favors such a confidence.
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A lady could not boast of her chastity who was never tempted.
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God defend me from being an honest man according to the description which every day I see made by each man to his own glorification
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Nor is it enough to toughen up his soul you must also toughen up his muscles.
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Necessity is a violent school-mistress.
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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.
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The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mold...The same reason that makes us wrangle with a neighbor creates a war betwixt princes.
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The beginnings of all things are weak and tender. We must therefore be clear-sighted in the beginnings, for, as in their budding we discern not the danger, so in their full growth we perceive not the remedy.
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Malice sucks up the greatest part of its own venom, and poisons itself.
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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.
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Eloquence is an engine invented to manage and wield at will the fierce democracy, and, like medicine to the sick, is only employed in the paroxysms of a disordered state.
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He that had never seen a river, imagined the first he met with to be the sea.
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