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Presumption is our natural and original malady. The most vulnerable and frail of all creatures is man, and at the same time the most arrogant.

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
Vulnerable
Original
Creatures
Malady
Natural
Presumption
Self
Frail
Men
Arrogant
Time
Arrogance
Originals

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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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.
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Reason has so many forms that we do not know which to choose-Experiment has no fewer.
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The great and glorious masterpiece of men is to live to the point. All other things-to reign, to hoard, to build-are, at most, but inconsiderable props and appendages.
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True it is that she who escapeth safe and unpolluted from out the school of freedom, giveth more confidence of herself than she who comet sound out of the school of severity and restraint.
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Happiness involves working toward meaningful goals.
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I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.
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Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre of sentiment and resolution, in the suffering of human accidents.
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As by some might be saide of me: that here I have but gathered a nosegay of strange floures, and have put nothing of mine unto it, but the thred to binde them. Certes, I have given unto publike opinion, that these borrowed ornaments accompany me but I meane not they should cover or hide me.
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I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself, and not by borrowing.
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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.
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All the opinions in the world point out that pleasure is our aim.
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There is nothing useless in nature not even uselessness itself
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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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A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself.
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He that is a friend to himself, know he is a friend to all.
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Necessity is a violent school-mistress.
Michel de Montaigne
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He that first likened glory to a shadow did better than he was aware of. They are both of them things excellently vain. Glory also, like a shadow, goes sometimes before the body, and sometimes in length infinitely exceeds it.
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I see several animals that live so entire and perfect a life, some without sight, others without hearing: who knows whether to us also one, two, or three, or many other senses, may not be wanting?
Michel de Montaigne
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No pleasure is fully delightful without communications, and no delight absolute except imparted.
Michel de Montaigne
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The world is but a perennial movement. All things in it are in constant motion-the earth, the rocks of the Caucasus, the pyramids of Egypt-both with the common motion and with their own.
Michel de Montaigne