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This idea is more surely understood by interrogation WHAT DO I KNOW? which I bear as my motto with the emblem of a pair of scales.

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
Bears
Interrogation
Understood
Emblems
Knowledge
Motto
Idea
Pair
Ideas
Pairs
Scales
Surely
Bear
Emblem

More quotes by 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.
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Who is it that does not voluntarily exchange his health, his repose, and his very life for reputation and glory? The most useless, frivolous, and false coin that passes current among us.
Michel de Montaigne
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The only thing certain is nothing is certain.
Michel de Montaigne
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Fortune does us neither good nor hurt she only presents us the matter, and the seed, which our soul, more powerfully than she, turns and applies as she best pleases being the sole cause and sovereign mistress of her own happy or unhappy condition.
Michel de Montaigne
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The honor we receive from those that fear us, is not honor those respects are paid to royalty and not to me.
Michel de Montaigne
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I consider myself an average man, except in the fact that I consider myself an average man.
Michel de Montaigne
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Age imprints more wrinkles a in the mind, than it does in the face, and souls are never, or very rarely seen, that in growing old do not smell sour and musty. Man moves all together, both towards his perfection and decay.
Michel de Montaigne
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And obstinacy is the sister of constancy, at least in vigour and stability.
Michel de Montaigne
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The most unhappy and frail creatures are men and yet they are the proudest.
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
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Glory and repose are things that cannot possibly inhabit in one and the same place.
Michel de Montaigne
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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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I agree that we should work and prolong the functions of life as far as we can, and hope that Death may find me planting my cabbages, but indifferent to him and still more to the unfinished state of my garden.
Michel de Montaigne
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The share we have in the knowledge of truth, such as it is, has not been acquired by our own powers. God has taught ushis wonderful secrets our faith is not of our acquiring, it is purely the gift of another's bounty.
Michel de Montaigne
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Truly man is a marvelously vain, diverse, and undulating object. It is hard to found any constant and uniform judgment on him.
Michel de Montaigne
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Friendship is the highest degree of perfection in society.
Michel de Montaigne
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To divert myself from a troublesome fancy, it is but to run to my books they presently fix me to them, and drive the other out of my thoughts, and do not mutiny to see that I have only recourse to them for want of other more, real, natural, and lively conveniences they always receive me with the same kindness.
Michel de Montaigne
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As far as I am concerned, no road that would lead us to health is either arduous or expensive.
Michel de Montaigne
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True it is that she who escapeth safe and unpolluted from out the school of freedom, giveth more confidence of herself than she who comet sound out of the school of severity and restraint.
Michel de Montaigne
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The body enjoys a great share in our being, and has an eminent place in it. Its structure and composition, therefore, are worthy of proper consideration.
Michel de Montaigne