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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
Laugh
Laughing
Conditions
Able
Peculiar
Human
Laughed
Humans
Condition
Fit
Laughter
More quotes by Michel de Montaigne
Friendship is a creature formed for a companionship not for a herd.
Michel de Montaigne
We took advantage of [the Indians'] ignorance and inexperience to incline them the more easily toward treachery, lewdness, avarice, and every sort of inhumanity and cruelty, after the example and pattern of our ways.
Michel de Montaigne
True freedom is to have power over oneself for everything.
Michel de Montaigne
Persons of mean understandings, not so inquisitive, nor so well instructed, are made good Christians, and by reverence and obedience, implicity believe, and abide by their belief.
Michel de Montaigne
What am I to choose? Choose what you please, as long as you choose. There you have a foolish answer, which seems to be the outcome, however, of all Dogmatism, which will not allow us to be ignorant of that which we are ignorant.
Michel de Montaigne
The worst of my actions or conditions seem not so ugly unto me as I find it both ugly and base not to dare to avouch for them.
Michel de Montaigne
A man never speaks of himself without losing something. What he says in his disfavor is always beleived, but when he commends himself, he arouses mistrust.
Michel de Montaigne
Those that will combat use and custom by the strict rules of grammar do but jest
Michel de Montaigne
Poetry reproduces an indefinable mood that is more amorous than love itself. Venus is not so beautiful all naked, alive, and panting, as she is here in Virgil.
Michel de Montaigne
Habit is a second nature.
Michel de Montaigne
Those who give the first shock to a state are the first overwhelmed in its ruin the fruits of public commotion are seldom enjoyed by him who was the first mover he only beats the water for another's net.
Michel de Montaigne
In my opinion, every rich man is a miser.
Michel de Montaigne
We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.
Michel de Montaigne
Let us permit nature to have her way. She understands her business better than we do.
Michel de Montaigne
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
I love those historians that are either very simple or most excellent. Such as are between both (which is the most common fashion), it is they that spoil all they will needs chew our meat for us and take upon them a law to judge, and by consequence to square and incline the story according to their fantasy.
Michel de Montaigne
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
Human understanding is marvellously enlightened by daily conversation with men, for we are, otherwise, compressed and heaped up in ourselves, and have our sight limited to the length of our own noses.
Michel de Montaigne
For there is no air that men so greedily draw in, that diffuses itself so soon, and that penetrates so deep as that of license.
Michel de Montaigne
Age imprints more wrinkles a in the mind, than it does in the face, and souls are never, or very rarely seen, that in growing old do not smell sour and musty. Man moves all together, both towards his perfection and decay.
Michel de Montaigne
