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Have you been able to think out and manage your own life? You have done the greatest task of all.... All other things, ruling, hoarding, building, are only little appendages and props, at most.

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
Done
Task
Things
Manage
Think
Tasks
Appendages
Thinking
Building
Hoarding
Life
Greatest
Props
Littles
Ruling
Able
Thoughtful
Little
Privacy

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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Our own peculiar human condition is that we are as fit to be laughed at as able to laugh.
Michel de Montaigne
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The entire lower world was created in the likeness of the higher world. All that exists in the higher world appears like an image in this lower world yet all this is but One.
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A man must not always tell all, for that be folly but what a man says should be what he thinks.
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Lay a beam between these two towers of such width as we need to walk on: there is no philosophical wisdom of such great firmness that it can give us courage to walk on it as we should if it were on the ground.
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It should be noted that children at play are not playing about their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity.
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Reason has so many forms that we do not know which to choose-Experiment has no fewer.
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To die is not to play a part in society it is the act of a single person. Let us live and laugh among our friends let us die and sulk among strangers.
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The world is but a school of inquisition it is not who shall enter the ring, but who shall run the best courses.
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We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, so that what we believe we disbelieve, and cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn.
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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.
Michel de Montaigne
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Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves by railing at it and yet it is not absolutely railing against anything, to proclaim its defects, because they are in all things to be found, how beautiful or how much to be coveted soever.
Michel de Montaigne
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People of our time are so formed for agitation and ostentation that goodness, moderation, equability, constancy, and such quiet and obscure qualities are no longer felt.
Michel de Montaigne
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Can anything be imagined so ridiculous that this miserable and wretched creature, who is not so much as master of himself, but subject to the injuries of all things, should call himself master and emperor of the world, of which he has not power to know the least part, much less to command the whole?
Michel de Montaigne
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'As a man who knows how to make his education into a rule of life not a means of showing off who can control himself and obey his own principles.' The true mirror of our discourse is the course of our lives.
Michel de Montaigne
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One may be humble out of pride.
Michel de Montaigne
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Order a purge for your brain, it will there be much better employed than upon your stomach.
Michel de Montaigne
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The land of marriage has this peculiarity: that strangers are desirous of inhabiting it, while its natural inhabitants would willingly be banished from thence.
Michel de Montaigne
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This notion [skepticism] is more clearly understood by asking What do I know?
Michel de Montaigne
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There are truths on this side of the Pyrenees which are falsehoods on the other
Michel de Montaigne
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Meditation is a powerful and full study as can effectually taste and employ themselves.
Michel de Montaigne