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Truly man is a marvelously vain, diverse, and undulating object. It is hard to found any constant and uniform judgment on him.

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
Truly
Uniform
Objects
Uniforms
Found
Diverse
Hard
Vain
Men
Diversity
Object
Constant
Undulating
Judgment
Marvelously

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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We have power over nothing except our will.
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Virtue rejects facility to be her companion. She requires a craggy, rough and thorny way.
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And truly Philosophy is but sophisticated poetry. Whence do those ancient writers derive all their authority but from the poets?
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I aim here only at revealing myself, who will perhaps be different tomorrow, if I learn something new which changes me.
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Can anything be imagined so ridiculous that this miserable and wretched creature, who is not so much as master of himself, but subject to the injuries of all things, should call himself master and emperor of the world, of which he has not power to know the least part, much less to command the whole?
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It is not a mind, it is not a body that we educate, but it is a man, and we must not make two parts of him.
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This notion [skepticism] is more clearly understood by asking What do I know?
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We have no participation in Being, because all human nature is ever midway between being born and dying, giving off only a vague image and shadow of itself, and a weak and uncertain opinion. And if you chance to fix your thoughts on trying to grasp its essence, it would be neither more nor less than if your tried to clutch water.
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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.
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For a desperate disease a desperate cure.
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A man should ever, as much as in him lieth, be ready booted to take his journey, and above all things look he have then nothing to do but with himself.
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It is probable that the principal credit of miracles, visions, enchantments, and such extraordinary occurrences comes from the power of imagination, acting principally upon the minds of the common people, which are softer.
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When I express my opinions it is so as to reveal the measure of my sight not the measure of the thing.
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He loves little who loves by rule.
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We should be similarly wary of accepting common opinions we should judge them by the ways of reason not by popular vote.
Michel de Montaigne
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We must learn to suffer what we cannot evade.
Michel de Montaigne
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The most certain sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness her state is like that of things in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene.
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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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Eloquence is an engine invented to manage and wield at will the fierce democracy, and, like medicine to the sick, is only employed in the paroxysms of a disordered state.
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Nature clasps all her creatures in a universal embrace there is not one of them which she has not plainly furnished with all means necessary to the conservation of its being.
Michel de Montaigne