Quote

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

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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
Deep
Greedily
Men
Penetrates
Penetrate
License
Draw
Draws
Air
Soon
Diffuses

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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Scratching is one of nature's sweetest gratifications, and nearest at hand.
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How often, being moved under a false cause, if the person offending makes a good defense and presents us with a just excuse, are we angry against truth and innocence itself?
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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 oldest and best known evil was ever more supportable than one that was new and untried.
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O human creature,you are the investigator without knowledge, the magistrate without jurisdiction, and all in all, the fool of the farce.
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So it is with minds. Unless you keep them busy with some definite subject that will bridle and control them, they throw themselves in disorder hither and yon in the vague field of imagination... And there is no mad or idle fancy that they do not bring forth in the agitation.
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It is a rare life that remains orderly even in private.
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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.
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Have you been able to think out and manage your own life? You have done the greatest task of all.... All other things, ruling, hoarding, building, are only little appendages and props, at most.
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Is there a polity better ordered, the offices better distributed, and more inviolably observed and maintained, than that of bees?
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In the examples that I here bring in of what I have [read], heard, done or said, I have refrained from daring to alter even the smallest and most indifferent circumstances. My conscience falsifies not an iota for my knowledge I cannot answer.
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Were I to live my life over again, I should live it just as I have done. I neither complain of the past, nor do I fear the future.
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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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Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages.
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If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because it was I.
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I see men ordinarily more eager to discover a reason for things than to find out whether the things are so.
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Disappointment and feebleness imprint upon us a cowardly and valetudinarian virtue.
Michel de Montaigne
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I honor most those to whom I show least honor and where my soul moves with great alacrity, I forget the proper steps of ceremony.
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After they had accustomed themselves at Rome to the spectacles of the slaughter of animals, they proceeded to those of the slaughter of men, to the gladiators.
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Among the liberal arts, let us begin with the art that liberates us.
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