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My errors are by now natural and incorrigible but the good that worthy men do the public by making themselves imitable, I shall perhaps do by making myself evitable.

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
Men
Errors
Worthy
Perhaps
Shall
Public
Natural
Making
Incorrigible
Good
Imitation

More quotes by 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.
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When I quote others I do so in order to express my own ideas more clearly.
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Ambition is not a vice of little people.
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One may be humble out of pride.
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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.
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Friendship that possesses the whole soul, and there rules and sways with an absolute sovereignty, can admit of no rival.
Michel de Montaigne
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A little of everything and nothing thoroughly, after the French fashion.
Michel de Montaigne
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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.
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The good, supreme, divine poetry is above the rules and reason. Whoever discerns its beauty with a firm, sedate gaze does not see it, any more than he sees the splendor of a lightning flash. It does not persuade our judgement, it ravishes and overwhelms it.
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A volunteer, you assign yourself specific roles and risks according to your judgement of their brilliance and importance, and you see when life itself may be justifiably devoted to them.
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We are born to inquire after truth it belongs to a greater power to possess it. It is not, as Democritus said, hid in the bottom of the deeps, but rather elevated to an infinite height in the divine knowledge.
Michel de Montaigne
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Examples teach us that in military affairs, and all others of a like nature, study is apt to enervate and relax the courage of man, rather than to give strength and energy to the mind.
Michel de Montaigne
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Health is a precious thing, and the only one, in truth, meriting that a man should lay out not only his time, sweat, labor and goods, but also life itself to obtain it.
Michel de Montaigne
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Virtue cannot be followed but for herself, and if one sometimes borrows her mask to some other purpose, she presently pulls it away again.
Michel de Montaigne
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We are all patchwork, and so shapeless and diverse in composition that each bit, each moment, plays its own game.
Michel de Montaigne
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We hold death, poverty, and grief for our principal enemies but this death, which some repute the most dreadful of all dreadful things, who does not know that others call it the only secure harbor from the storm and tempests of life, the sovereign good of nature, the sole support of liberty, and the common and sudden remedy of all evils?
Michel de Montaigne
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One should always have one's boots on and be ready to leave.
Michel de Montaigne
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I have seen people rude by being over-polite.
Michel de Montaigne
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We cannot fail in following nature.
Michel de Montaigne
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It is the part of cowardice, not of courage, to go and crouch in a hole under a massive tomb, to avoid the blows of fortune.
Michel de Montaigne