Quote

In the examples that I here bring in of what I have [read], heard, done or said, I have refrained from daring to alter even the smallest and most indifferent circumstances. My conscience falsifies not an iota for my knowledge I cannot answer.

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
Even
Answers
Alter
Bring
Daring
Heard
Indifferent
Knowledge
Smallest
Read
Conscience
Refrained
Cannot
Answer
Falsifies
Change
Circumstances
Iota
Done
Example
Examples

More quotes by 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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Oh, what a valiant faculty is hope.
Michel de Montaigne
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Some impose upon the world that they believe that which they do not others, more in number, make themselves believe that they believe, not being able to penetrate into what it is to believe.
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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My art and profession is to live.
Michel de Montaigne
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I find no quality so easy for a man to counterfeit as devotion, though his life and manner are not conformable to it the essence of it is abstruse and occult, but the appearances easy and showy.
Michel de Montaigne
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It is for little souls, that truckle under the weight of affairs, not to know how clearly to disengage themselves, and not to know how to lay them aside and take them up again.
Michel de Montaigne
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There is a sort of gratification in doing good which makes us rejoice in ourselves.
Michel de Montaigne
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Dreams are faithful interpreters of our inclinations but there is art required to sort and understand them.
Michel de Montaigne
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It is only reasonable to allow the administration of affairs to mothers before their children reach the age prescribed by law at which they themselves can be responsible. But that father would have reared them ill who could not hope that in their maturity they would have more wisdom and competence than his wife.
Michel de Montaigne
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All of the days go toward death and the last one arrives there.
Michel de Montaigne
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He who is not sure of his memory, should not undertake the trade of lying.
Michel de Montaigne
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Our skin is provided as adequately as theirs with endurance against the assaults of the weather: witness so many nations who have not yet tried the use of any clothes. Our ancient Gauls wore hardly any clothes nor do the Irish, our neighbors, under so cold a sky.
Michel de Montaigne
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The truth of these days is not that which really is, but what every man persuades another man to believe.
Michel de Montaigne
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The ceaseless labour of your life is to build the house of death.
Michel de Montaigne
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What am I to choose? Choose what you please, as long as you choose. There you have a foolish answer, which seems to be the outcome, however, of all Dogmatism, which will not allow us to be ignorant of that which we are ignorant.
Michel de Montaigne
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I admire the assurance and confidence everyone has in himself, whereas there is hardly anything I am sure I know or that I dare give my word I can do.
Michel de Montaigne
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The common notions that we find in credit around us and infused into our souls by our fathers' seed, these seem to be the universal and natural ones. Whence it comes to pass that what is off the hinges of custom, people believe to be off the hinges of reason.
Michel de Montaigne
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Oh, what a valiant faculty is hope, that in a mortal subject, and in a moment, makes nothing of usurping infinity, immensity, eternity, and of supplying its masters indigence, at its pleasure, with all things he can imagine or desire!
Michel de Montaigne
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There is nothing of evil in life for him who rightly comprehends that death is no evil to know how to die delivers us from all subjection and constraint.
Michel de Montaigne