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Our own peculiar human condition is that we are as fit to be laughed at as able to laugh.
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
Humans
Condition
Fit
Laughter
Laugh
Laughing
Conditions
Able
Peculiar
Human
Laughed
More quotes by Michel de Montaigne
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
True freedom is to have power over oneself for everything.
Michel de Montaigne
To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquillity in our conduct.
Michel de Montaigne
When I quote others I do so in order to express my own ideas more clearly.
Michel de Montaigne
I consider myself an average man, except in the fact that I consider myself an average man.
Michel de Montaigne
Shame on all eloquence which leaves us with a taste for itself and not for its substance.
Michel de Montaigne
Friendship is a creature formed for a companionship not for a herd.
Michel de Montaigne
If people must be talking about me, I would have it to be truthfully and justly. I would willingly return from the next world to contradict any person who described me other than I was, although he did it to honour me.
Michel de Montaigne
The worth of the mind consisteth not in going high, but in marching orderly.
Michel de Montaigne
Everyone gives the title of barbarism to everything that is not in use in his own country.
Michel de Montaigne
If your doctor does not think it good for you to sleep, to drink wine, or to eat of a particular dish, do not worry I will find you another who will not agree with him.
Michel de Montaigne
I love a friendship that flatters itself in the sharpness and vigor of its communications.
Michel de Montaigne
I am further of opinion that it would be better for us to have [no laws] at all than to have them in so prodigious numbers as we have.
Michel de Montaigne
Our wisdom and deliberation for the most part follow the lead of chance.
Michel de Montaigne
It costs an unreasonable woman no more to pass over one reason than another they cherish themselves most where they are most wrong.
Michel de Montaigne
Human wisdom makes as ill use of her talent when she exercises it in rescinding from the number and sweetness of those pleasures that are naturally our due, as she employs it favorably and well in artificially disguising and tricking out the ills of life to alleviate the sense of them.
Michel de Montaigne
The honor we receive from those that fear us, is not honor those respects are paid to royalty and not to me.
Michel de Montaigne
Tortures are a dangerous invention, and seem to be a test of endurance rather than of truth.
Michel de Montaigne
Nor is it enough to toughen up his soul you must also toughen up his muscles.
Michel de Montaigne
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