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To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquillity in our conduct.
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
Books
Tranquillity
Winning
Compose
Order
Provinces
Character
Battles
Book
Conduct
Self
Behavior
Battle
Duty
More quotes by Michel de Montaigne
For me, who only desire to become wise, not more learned or eloquent, these logical or Aristotelian dispositions of parts are of no use.
Michel de Montaigne
Off I go, rummaging about in books for sayings which please me.
Michel de Montaigne
The plague of man is boasting of his knowledge.
Michel de Montaigne
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
If others examined themselves attentively, as I do, they would find themselves, as I do, full of inanity and nonsense. Get rid of it I cannot without getting rid of myself.
Michel de Montaigne
All the world knows me in my book, and my book in me.
Michel de Montaigne
The only good histories are those written by those who had command in the events they describe.
Michel de Montaigne
I seek in the reading of books, only to please myself, by an honest diversion.
Michel de Montaigne
If I were of the trade, I should naturalize art as much as they artialize nature.
Michel de Montaigne
The clatter of arms drowns out the voice of law.
Michel de Montaigne
He that had never seen a river imagined the first he met to be the sea and the greatest things that have fallen within our knowledge we conclude the extremes that nature makes of the kind.
Michel de Montaigne
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
It should be noted that children at play are not playing about their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity.
Michel de Montaigne
All I say is by way of discourse, and nothing by way of advice. I should not speak so boldly if it were my due to be believed.
Michel de Montaigne
Order a purge for your brain, it will there be much better employed than upon your stomach.
Michel de Montaigne
What kind of truth is it which has these mountains as its boundary and is a lie beyond them?
Michel de Montaigne
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
Reason has so many forms that we do not know which to choose-Experiment has no fewer.
Michel de Montaigne
Silence and modesty are very valuable qualities in conversation.
Michel de Montaigne
We call comeliness a mischance in the first respect, which belongs principally to the face.
Michel de Montaigne