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And truly Philosophy is but sophisticated poetry. Whence do those ancient writers derive all their authority but from the poets?

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
Philosophical
Ancient
Writers
Authority
Poet
Whence
Truly
Derive
Poetry
Sophisticated
Philosophy
Poets

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics.
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Men of simple understanding, little inquisitive and little instructed, make good Christians.
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Oh senseless man, who cannot possibly make a worm or a flea and yet will create Gods by the dozen!
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No wonder, said an Ancient, that chance has so much power over us, since it is by chance that we live.
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Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.
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A man has need of tough ears to hear himself fairly judged.
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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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Philosophical discussions habitually make men happy and joyful not frowning and sad.
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In my opinion it is the happy living, and not, as Antisthenes said, the happy lying, in which human happiness consists.
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If faces were not alike, we could not distinguish men from beasts if they were not different, we could not tell one man from another.
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Words repeated again have as another sound, so another sense.
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Obsession is the wellspring of genius and madness.
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Since philosophy is the art which teaches us how to live, and since children need to learn it as much as we do at other ages, why do we not instruct them in it?
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It is an injustice that an old, broken, half-dead father should enjoy alone, in a corner of his hearth, possessions that would suffice for the advancement and maintenance of many children.
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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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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.
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It is a thorny undertaking, and more so than it seems, to follow a movement so wandering as that of our mind, to penetrate the opaque depths of its innermost folds, to pick out and immobilize the innumerable flutterings that agitate it.
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Whoever will imagine a perpetual confession of ignorance, a judgment without leaning or inclination, on any occasion whatever, hasa conception of Pyrrhonism.
Michel de Montaigne
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A well-bred man is always sociable and complaisant.
Michel de Montaigne
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He who does not live in some degree for others, hardly lives for himself.
Michel de Montaigne