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Tortures are a dangerous invention, and seem to be a test of endurance rather than of truth.
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
Dangerous
Violence
Tortures
Rather
Endurance
Truth
Torture
Seems
Test
Invention
Tests
Seem
More quotes by Michel de Montaigne
Books are pleasant, but if by being over-studious we impair our health and spoil our good humour, two of the best things we have, let us give it over. I, for my part, am one of those who think no fruit derived from them can recompense so great a loss.
Michel de Montaigne
Amongst so many borrowed things, am glad if I can steal one, disguising and altering it for some new service.
Michel de Montaigne
Water, earth, air, fire, and the other parts of this structure of mine are no more instruments of your life than instruments of your death. Why do you fear your last day? It contributes no more to your death than each of the others. The last step does not cause the fatigue, but reveals it. All days travel toward death, the last one reaches it.
Michel de Montaigne
Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head.
Michel de Montaigne
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.
Michel de Montaigne
To how many blockheads of my time has a cold and taciturn demeanor procured the credit of prudence and capacity!
Michel de Montaigne
It is far more probable that our senses should deceive us, than that an old woman should be carried up a chimney on a broom stick and that it is far less astonishing that witnesses should lie, than that witches should perform the acts that were alleged.
Michel de Montaigne
It is the mind that maketh good or ill, That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor.
Michel de Montaigne
I have here only made a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the thread that tied them together.
Michel de Montaigne
A man must not always tell all, for that be folly but what a man says should be what he thinks.
Michel de Montaigne
It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness.
Michel de Montaigne
The world is but a perpetual see-saw.
Michel de Montaigne
The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use some men have lived long, and lived little attend to it while you are in it. It lies in your will, not in the number of years, for you to have lived enough.
Michel de Montaigne
The thing in the world I am most afraid of is fear.
Michel de Montaigne
He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.
Michel de Montaigne
When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her.
Michel de Montaigne
There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.
Michel de Montaigne
There is a huge gulf between the man who follows the conventions and laws of his country and the man who sets out to regiment them and to change them.
Michel de Montaigne
I am disgusted with innovation, in whatever guise, and with reason, for I have seen very harmful effects of it.
Michel de Montaigne
Obsession is the wellspring of genius and madness.
Michel de Montaigne