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

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Examples teach us that in military affairs, and all others of a like nature, study is apt to enervate and relax the courage of man, rather than to give strength and energy to the mind.
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To die is not to play a part in society it is the act of a single person. Let us live and laugh among our friends let us die and sulk among strangers.
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I do not believe, from what I have been told about this people, that there is anything barbarous or savage about them, except that we all call barbarous anything that is contrary to our own habits.
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It would be better to have no laws at all, than to have too many.
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Let us a little permit nature to take her own way she better understands her own affairs than we.
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Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre of sentiment and resolution, in the suffering of human accidents.
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Such as are in immediate fear of a losing their estates, of banishment, or of slavery, live in perpetual anguish, and lose all appetite and repose whereas such as are actually poor, slaves, or exiles, ofttimes live as merrily as other folk.
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Necessity is a violent school-mistress.
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Who ever saw a doctor use the prescription of his colleague without cutting out or adding something?
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It is the mind that maketh good or ill, That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor.
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Knowledge is an excellent drug but no drug has virtue enough to preserve itself from corruption and decay, if the vessel be tainted and impure wherein it is put to keep.
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I admire the assurance and confidence everyone has in himself, whereas there is hardly anything I am sure I know or that I dare give my word I can do.
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Nature has, herself, I fear, imprinted in man a kind of instinct to inhumanity.
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We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.
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Teach him a certain refinement in sorting out and selecting his arguments, with an affection for relevance and so for brevity. Above all let him be taught to throw down his arms and surrender to truth as soon as he perceives it, whether the truth is born at his rival's doing or within himself from some change in his ideas.
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Tis faith alone that vividly and certainly comprehends the deep mysteries of our religion.
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Speaking is half his that speaks, and half his that hears.
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We find ourselves more taken with the running up and down, the games, and puerile simplicities of our children, than we do, afterward, with their most complete actions as if we had loved them for our sport, like monkeys, and not as men.
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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.
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We do not correct the man we hang we correct others by him.
Michel de Montaigne