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All opinions in the world agree in this, that pleasure is our end, although they differ as to the means of attaining 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
Mean
Opinions
World
Although
Agree
Differences
Opinion
Pleasure
Means
Attaining
Ends
Differ

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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The pleasantest things in the world are pleasant thoughts, and the great art of life is to have as many of them as possible.
Michel de Montaigne
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Love to his soul gave eyes he knew things are not as they seem. The dream is his real life the world around him is the dream.
Michel de Montaigne
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Every day I hear stupid people say things that are not stupid.
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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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.
Michel de Montaigne
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It is not necessity but abundance which produces greed.
Michel de Montaigne
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I go out of my way, but rather by license than carelessness.... It is the inattentive reader who loses my subject, not I. Some word about it will always be found off in a corner, which will not fail to be sufficient, though it takes little room.
Michel de Montaigne
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I am afraid that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, and that we have more curiosity than understanding. We grasp at everything, but catch nothing except wind.
Michel de Montaigne
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The thing I fear most is fear.
Michel de Montaigne
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I must accommodate my history to the hour: I may presently change, not only by fortune, but also by intention.
Michel de Montaigne
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A person is bound to lose when he talks about himself if he belittles himself, he is believed if he praises himself, he isn't believed.
Michel de Montaigne
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If I speak of myself in different ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways.
Michel de Montaigne
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Fortune does us neither good nor hurt she only presents us the matter, and the seed, which our soul, more powerfully than she, turns and applies as she best pleases being the sole cause and sovereign mistress of her own happy or unhappy condition.
Michel de Montaigne
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Difficulty is a coin the learned make use of like jugglers, to conceal the inanity of their art.
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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Example is a bright looking-glass, universal and for all shapes to look into.
Michel de Montaigne
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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.
Michel de Montaigne
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Rash and incessant scolding runs into custom and renders itself despised.
Michel de Montaigne
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The same reason that makes us chide and brawl and fall out with any of our neighbors, causeth a war to follow between Princes.
Michel de Montaigne
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To how many blockheads of my time has a cold and taciturn demeanor procured the credit of prudence and capacity!
Michel de Montaigne