Quote

Water, earth, air, fire, and the other parts of this structure of mine are no more instruments of your life than instruments of your death. Why do you fear your last day? It contributes no more to your death than each of the others. The last step does not cause the fatigue, but reveals it. All days travel toward death, the last one reaches it.

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
Death
Steps
Structure
Others
Days
Mines
Doe
Fire
Mine
Contributes
Earth
Causes
Air
Fatigue
Life
Lasts
Travel
Reaches
Last
Step
Reveals
Water
Toward
Instruments
Fear
Cause
Parts

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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The knowledge of courtesy and good manners is a very necessary study. It is like grace and beauty, that which begets liking and an inclination to love one another at the first sight.
Michel de Montaigne
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I do not teach. I relate.
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All the world knows me in my book, and my book in me.
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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Order a purge for your brain, it will there be much better employed than upon your stomach.
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I do not believe, from what I have been told about this people, that there is anything barbarous or savage about them, except that we all call barbarous anything that is contrary to our own habits.
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The plague of man is the opinion of knowledge. That is why ignorance is so recommended by our religion as a quality suitable to belief and obedience.
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.
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There is no more expensive thing than a free gift.
Michel de Montaigne
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There is a certain consideration, and a general duty of humanity, that binds us not only to the animals, which have life and feeling, but even to the trees and plants. We owe justice to people, and kindness and benevolence to all other creatures who may be susceptible of it. There is some intercourse between them and us, and some mutual obligation.
Michel de Montaigne
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I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided if greater pains be the consequence, and pains to be coveted that will terminate in greater pleasures.
Michel de Montaigne
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Aesop, that great man, saw his master making water as he walked. What! he said, Must we void ourselves as we run? Use our timeas best we may, yet a great part of it will still be idly and ill spent.
Michel de Montaigne
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He that I am reading seems always to have the most force.
Michel de Montaigne
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A man has need of tough ears to hear himself fairly judged.
Michel de Montaigne
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The shortest way to arrive at glory should be to do that for conscience which we do for glory. And the virtue of Alexander appears to me with much less vigor in his theater than that of Socrates in his mean and obscure. I can easily conceive Socrates in the place of Alexander, but Alexander in that of Socrates I cannot.
Michel de Montaigne
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Is there anything so grave and serious as an ass?
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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Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.
Michel de Montaigne
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A man should think less of what he eats and more with whom he eats because no food is so satisfying as good company.
Michel de Montaigne
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A liar would be brave toward God, while he is a coward toward men for a lie faces God, and shrinks from man.
Michel de Montaigne