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Is it reasonable that even the arts should take advantage of and profit by our natural stupidity and feebleness of mind?

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
Take
Feebleness
Even
Stupidity
Mind
Reasonable
Arts
Profit
Advantage
Natural
Art

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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Learning must not only lodge with us: we must marry her.
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My trade and art is to live.
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Gentleness and repose are paramount to everything else in woman.
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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.
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The thing in the world I am most afraid of is fear, and with good reason that passion alone, in the trouble of it, exceeding all other accidents
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I cruelly hate cruelty, both by nature and reason, as the worst of all the vices. But then I am so soft in this that I cannot seea chicken's neck wrung without distress, and cannot bear to hear the squealing of a hare between the teeth of my hounds.
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We judge a horse not only by its pace on a racecourse, but also by its walk, nay, when resting in its stable.
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We find ourselves more taken with the running up and down, the games, and puerile simplicities of our children, than we do, afterward, with their most complete actions as if we had loved them for our sport, like monkeys, and not as men.
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The wise man should withdraw his soul within, out of the crowd, and keep it in freedom and power to judge things freely but as for externals, he should wholly follow the accepted fashions and forms.
Michel de Montaigne
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And not to serve for a table-talk.
Michel de Montaigne
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If health and a fair day smile upon me, I am a very good fellow if a corn trouble my toe, I am sullen, out of humor, and inaccessible.
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Plenty and indigence depend upon the opinion every one has of them and riches, like glory of health, have no more beauty or pleasure than their possessor is pleaded to lend them.
Michel de Montaigne
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There were many terrible things in my life and most of them never happened.
Michel de Montaigne
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God defend me from being an honest man according to the description which every day I see made by each man to his own glorification
Michel de Montaigne
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All the opinions in the world point out that pleasure is our aim.
Michel de Montaigne
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The human face is a weak guarantee yet it deserves some consideration. And if I had to whip the wicked, I would do so more severely to those who belied and betrayed the promises that nature had implanted on their brows I would punish malice more harshly when it was hidden under a kindly appearance.
Michel de Montaigne
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Any person of honor chooses rather to lose his honor than to lose his conscience.
Michel de Montaigne
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It takes so much to be a king that he exists only as such. That extraneous glare that surrounds him hides him and conceals him from us our sight breaks and is dissipated by it being filled and arrested by this strong light.
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Our truth of nowadays is not what is, but what others can be convinced of just as we call money not only that which is legal, but also any counterfeit that will pass.
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Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately.
Michel de Montaigne