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I do not correct my first imaginings by my second--well, yes, perhaps a word or so, but only to vary, not to delete. I want to represent the course of my humors and I want people to see each part at its birth.

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
Firsts
Birth
Humors
Well
Perhaps
Imaginings
First
Second
Delete
People
Courses
Vary
Course
Authenticity
Word
Sincerity
Part
Represent
Wells
Correct

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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There is as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and others.
Michel de Montaigne
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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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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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We are nearer neighbors to ourselves than the whiteness of snow or the weight of stones are to us: if man does not know himself, how should he know his functions and powers?
Michel de Montaigne
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A man must keep a little back shop where he can be himself without reserve. In solitude alone can he know true freedom.
Michel de Montaigne
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Nature clasps all her creatures in a universal embrace there is not one of them which she has not plainly furnished with all means necessary to the conservation of its being.
Michel de Montaigne
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He that first likened glory to a shadow did better than he was aware of. They are both of them things excellently vain. Glory also, like a shadow, goes sometimes before the body, and sometimes in length infinitely exceeds it.
Michel de Montaigne
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The relish of good and evil depends in a great measure upon the opinion we have of them.
Michel de Montaigne
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If I were a maker of books I should compile a register, with comments, of different deaths. He who should teach people to die, would teach them to live.
Michel de Montaigne
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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.
Michel de Montaigne
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Words repeated again have as another sound, so another sense.
Michel de Montaigne
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Other people do not see you at all, but guess at you by uncertain conjectures.
Michel de Montaigne
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It needs courage to be afraid.
Michel de Montaigne
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Whatever I may be, I want to be elsewhere than on paper. My art and my industry have been employed in making myself good for something my studies, in teaching me to do, not to write. I have put all my efforts into forming my life. That is my trade and my work.
Michel de Montaigne
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I speak the truth, not my fill of it, but as much as I dare speak and I dare to do so a little more as I grow old.
Michel de Montaigne
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To distract myself from tiresome thoughts, I have only to resort to books they easily draw my mind to themselves and away from other things.
Michel de Montaigne
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Every man has within himself the entire human condition
Michel de Montaigne
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To philosophize is nothing else than to prepare oneself for death.
Michel de Montaigne
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There is no desire more natural than the desire of knowledge. (Il n'est desir plus naturel que le desir de connaissance)
Michel de Montaigne
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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.
Michel de Montaigne