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Seneca's virtue shows forth so live and vigorous in his writings, and the defense is so clear there against some of these imputations, as that of his wealth and excessive spending, that I would not believe any testimony to the contrary.

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
Would
Spending
Seneca
Wealth
Writings
Virtue
Excessive
Clear
Vigorous
Shows
Testimony
Live
Forth
Writing
Defense
Believe
Contrary

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The public weal requires that men should betray, and lie, and massacre.
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Great authors, when they write about causes, adduce not only those they think are true but also those they do not believe in, provided they have some originality and beauty. They speak truly and usefully enough if they speak ingeniously.
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It costs an unreasonable woman no more to pass over one reason than another they cherish themselves most where they are most wrong.
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Who feareth to suffer suffereth already, because he feareth.
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It has never occurred to me to wish for empire or royalty, nor for the eminence of those high and commanding fortunes. My aim lies not in that direction I love myself too well.
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We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.
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In my youth I studied for ostentation later, a little to gain wisdom now, for recreation never for gain.
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I have here only made a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the thread that tied them together.
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Who ever saw a doctor use the prescription of his colleague without cutting out or adding something?
Michel de Montaigne
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Books are pleasant, but if by being over-studious we impair our health and spoil our good humour, two of the best things we have, let us give it over. I, for my part, am one of those who think no fruit derived from them can recompense so great a loss.
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Oh, what a valiant faculty is hope, that in a mortal subject, and in a moment, makes nothing of usurping infinity, immensity, eternity, and of supplying its masters indigence, at its pleasure, with all things he can imagine or desire!
Michel de Montaigne
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In plain Truth, it is no Want, but rather Abundance that creates Avarice.
Michel de Montaigne
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Such as are in immediate fear of a losing their estates, of banishment, or of slavery, live in perpetual anguish, and lose all appetite and repose whereas such as are actually poor, slaves, or exiles, ofttimes live as merrily as other folk.
Michel de Montaigne
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The shortest way to arrive at glory should be to do that for conscience which we do for glory. And the virtue of Alexander appears to me with much less vigor in his theater than that of Socrates in his mean and obscure. I can easily conceive Socrates in the place of Alexander, but Alexander in that of Socrates I cannot.
Michel de Montaigne
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Long life, and short, are by death made all one for there is no long, nor short, to things that are no more.
Michel de Montaigne
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He that had never seen a river imagined the first he met to be the sea and the greatest things that have fallen within our knowledge we conclude the extremes that nature makes of the kind.
Michel de Montaigne
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If I speak of myself in different ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways.
Michel de Montaigne
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Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre of sentiment and resolution, in the suffering of human accidents.
Michel de Montaigne
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We seem ambitious God's whole work to undo. ...With new diseases on ourselves we war, And with new physic, a worse engine far.
Michel de Montaigne
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Life in itself is neither good nor evil, it is the place of good and evil, according to what you make it.
Michel de Montaigne