Quote

Those who make a practice of comparing human actions are never so perplexed as when they try to see them as a whole and in the same light for they commonly contradict each other so strangely that it seems impossible that they have come from the same shop.

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
Human
Compare
Humans
Diversity
Perplexed
Come
Actions
Contradict
Whole
Impossible
Comparing
Trying
Practice
Strangely
Make
Action
Commonly
Never
Light
Shop
Seems
Shops

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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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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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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The world is but a school of inquisition it is not who shall enter the ring, but who shall run the best courses.
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Virtue shuns ease as a companion. It demands a rough and thorny path.
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In his commerce with men I mean him to include- and that principally- those who live only in the memory of books. By means of history he will frequent those great souls of former years. If you want it to be so, history can be a waste of time it can also be, if you want it to be so, a study bearing fruit beyond price.
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Order a purge for your brain, it will there be much better employed than upon your stomach.
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I may indeed very well happen to contradict myself but truth, as Demades said, I do not contradict.
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I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.
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Beauty is the true prerogative of women, and so peculiarly their own, that our sex, though naturally requiring another sort of feature, is never in its lustre but when puerile and beardless, confused and mixed with theirs.
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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
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Philosophical discussions habitually make men happy and joyful not frowning and sad.
Michel de Montaigne
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There are few men who dare to publish to the world the prayers they make to Almighty God.
Michel de Montaigne
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I do not correct my first imaginings by my second--well, yes, perhaps a word or so, but only to vary, not to delete. I want to represent the course of my humors and I want people to see each part at its birth.
Michel de Montaigne
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Women when they marry buy a cat in the bag.
Michel de Montaigne
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It is only reasonable to allow the administration of affairs to mothers before their children reach the age prescribed by law at which they themselves can be responsible. But that father would have reared them ill who could not hope that in their maturity they would have more wisdom and competence than his wife.
Michel de Montaigne
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Lay a beam between these two towers of such width as we need to walk on: there is no philosophical wisdom of such great firmness that it can give us courage to walk on it as we should if it were on the ground.
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He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.
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We must learn to suffer what we cannot evade.
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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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Words repeated again have as another sound, so another sense.
Michel de Montaigne