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If people must be talking about me, I would have it to be truthfully and justly. I would willingly return from the next world to contradict any person who described me other than I was, although he did it to honour me.

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
World
Talking
Truthfully
People
Next
Contradict
Truth
Justly
Persons
Willingly
Person
Described
Self
Honour
Must
Although
Would
Return

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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It is commonly seene by experience, that excellent memories do rather accompany weake judgements.
Michel de Montaigne
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To say less of yourself than is true is stupidity, not modesty. To pay yourself less than you are worth is cowardice and pusillanimity.
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I go out of my way, but rather by license than carelessness.... It is the inattentive reader who loses my subject, not I. Some word about it will always be found off in a corner, which will not fail to be sufficient, though it takes little room.
Michel de Montaigne
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Obsession is the wellspring of genius and madness.
Michel de Montaigne
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The worst of my actions or conditions seem not so ugly unto me as I find it both ugly and base not to dare to avouch for them.
Michel de Montaigne
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So it is with minds. Unless you keep them busy with some definite subject that will bridle and control them, they throw themselves in disorder hither and yon in the vague field of imagination... And there is no mad or idle fancy that they do not bring forth in the agitation.
Michel de Montaigne
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Every period of life has its peculiar prejudices whoever saw old age, that did not applaud the past, and condemn the present times?
Michel de Montaigne
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For a desperate disease a desperate cure.
Michel de Montaigne
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For there is no air that men so greedily draw in, that diffuses itself so soon, and that penetrates so deep as that of license.
Michel de Montaigne
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Rash and incessant scolding runs into custom and renders itself despised.
Michel de Montaigne
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Children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.
Michel de Montaigne
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My errors are by now natural and incorrigible but the good that worthy men do the public by making themselves imitable, I shall perhaps do by making myself evitable.
Michel de Montaigne
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Every man has within himself the entire human condition
Michel de Montaigne
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O human creature,you are the investigator without knowledge, the magistrate without jurisdiction, and all in all, the fool of the farce.
Michel de Montaigne
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I put forward formless and unresolved notions, as do those who publish doubtful questions to debate in the schools, not to establish the truth but to seek it.
Michel de Montaigne
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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.
Michel de Montaigne
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The clatter of arms drowns out the voice of law.
Michel de Montaigne
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Arts and sciences are not cast in a mould, but are found and perfected by degrees, by often handling and polishing.
Michel de Montaigne
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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.
Michel de Montaigne
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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.
Michel de Montaigne