Quote

Each person calls barbarism whatever is not his or her own practice.... We may call Cannibals barbarians, in respect to the rulesof reason, but not in respect to ourselves, who surpass them in every kind of barbarity.

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
Call
Cannibal
Whatever
Surpass
May
Barbarism
Persons
Barbarians
Person
Calls
Reason
Diversity
Cannibals
Every
Respect
Barbarity
Kind
Practice
Cannibalism

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It is an injustice that an old, broken, half-dead father should enjoy alone, in a corner of his hearth, possessions that would suffice for the advancement and maintenance of many children.
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It is for little souls, that truckle under the weight of affairs, not to know how clearly to disengage themselves, and not to know how to lay them aside and take them up again.
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A hair shirt does not always render those chaste who wear it.
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Ambition sufficiently plagues her proselytes, by keeping themselves always in show, like the statue of a public place.
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I have seen people rude by being over-polite.
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Is it not enough to make me come back to life out of spite, to have someone who spat in my face while I existed come and rub my feet when I am beginning to exist no longer?
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Men are nothing until they are excited.
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A foreign war is a lot milder than a civil war.
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Learning must not only lodge with us: we must marry her.
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It is in the enjoyment and not in mere possession that makes for happiness.
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The great and glorious masterpiece of humanity is to know how to live with a purpose.
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'As a man who knows how to make his education into a rule of life not a means of showing off who can control himself and obey his own principles.' The true mirror of our discourse is the course of our lives.
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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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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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There is a certain consideration, and a general duty of humanity, that binds us not only to the animals, which have life and feeling, but even to the trees and plants. We owe justice to people, and kindness and benevolence to all other creatures who may be susceptible of it. There is some intercourse between them and us, and some mutual obligation.
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All opinions in the world agree in this, that pleasure is our end, although they differ as to the means of attaining it.
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Meditation is a rich and powerful method of study for anyone who knows how to examine his mind.
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The first lessons with which we should irrigate his mind should be those which teach him to know himself, and to know how to die ... and to live.
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The religion of my doctor or my lawyer cannot matter. That consideration has nothing in common with the functions of the friendship they owe me.
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Whoever will imagine a perpetual confession of ignorance, a judgment without leaning or inclination, on any occasion whatever, hasa conception of Pyrrhonism.
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