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I honor most those to whom I show least honor and where my soul moves with great alacrity, I forget the proper steps of ceremony.

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
Moving
Ceremony
Shows
Moves
Soul
Proper
Self
Honor
Great
Steps
Least
Forget
Show
Alacrity

More quotes by 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.
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One should be ever booted and spurred and ready to depart.
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Others form man I tell of him, and portray a particular one, very ill-formed, whom I should really make very different from whathe is if I had to fashion him over again. But now it is done.
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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.
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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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The same reason that makes us chide and brawl and fall out with any of our neighbors, causeth a war to follow between Princes.
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We are all of us richer than we think we are but we are taught to borrow and to beg, and brought up more to make use of what is another's than of our own.
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The height and value of true virtue consists in the facility, utility, and pleasure of its exercise so far from difficulty, that boys, as well as men, and the innocent as well as the subtle, may make it their own and it is by order and good conduct, and not by force, that it is to be acquired.
Michel de Montaigne
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Painting myself for others, I have painted my inward self with colors clearer than my original ones. I have no more made my book than my book has made me--a book consubstantial with its author, concerned with my own self, an integral part of my life not concerned with some third-hand, extraneous purpose, like all other books.
Michel de Montaigne
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Men ... are not agreed about any one thing, not even that heaven is over our heads.
Michel de Montaigne
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Each person calls barbarism whatever is not his or her own practice.... We may call Cannibals barbarians, in respect to the rulesof reason, but not in respect to ourselves, who surpass them in every kind of barbarity.
Michel de Montaigne
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Who ever saw a doctor use the prescription of his colleague without cutting out or adding something?
Michel de Montaigne
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Now, since everything else is furnished with the exact amount of needle and thread required to maintain its being, it is in truth incredible that we alone should be brought into the world in a defective and indigent state, in a state such that we cannot maintain ourselves without external aid.
Michel de Montaigne
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We are more solicitous that men speak of us, than how they speak.
Michel de Montaigne
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Disappointment and feebleness imprint upon us a cowardly and valetudinarian virtue.
Michel de Montaigne
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The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use some men have lived long, and lived little attend to it while you are in it. It lies in your will, not in the number of years, for you to have lived enough.
Michel de Montaigne
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Nobody is exempt from saying stupid things, the harm is to do it presumptuously.
Michel de Montaigne
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If you have known how to compose your life, you have done a great deal more than the person who knows how to compose a book. You have done more than the one who has taken cities and empires.
Michel de Montaigne
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In my youth I studied for ostentation later, a little to gain wisdom now, for recreation never for gain.
Michel de Montaigne
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That is why Bias jested with those who were going through the perils of a great storm with him and calling on the gods for help: Shut up, he said, so that they do not realize that you are here with me.
Michel de Montaigne