Quote

The first distinction among men, and the first consideration that gave one precedence over another, was doubtless the advantage of beauty.

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
Beauty
Another
Doubtless
Precedence
Firsts
Consideration
First
Distinction
Men
Advantage
Gave
Among

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Habit is a second nature.
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Whatever I may be, I want to be elsewhere than on paper. My art and my industry have been employed in making myself good for something my studies, in teaching me to do, not to write. I have put all my efforts into forming my life. That is my trade and my work.
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If my mind could gain a firm footing, I would not make essays, I would make decisions but it is always in apprenticeship and on trial.
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Shame on all eloquence which leaves us with a taste for itself and not for its substance.
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I do not teach. I relate.
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Thus we should beware of clinging to vulgar opinions, and judge things by reason's way, not by popular say.
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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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Authors communicate with the people by some special extrinsic mark I am the first to do so by my entire being, as Michel de Montaigne.
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Seeing that the Senses cannot decide our dispute, being themselves full of uncertainty, we must have recourse to Reason there is no reason but must be built upon another reason: so here we are retreating backwards to infinity.
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Confidence in the goodness of another is good proof of one's own goodness.
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We must not attach knowledge to the mind, we have to incorporate it there.
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There is nothing of evil in life for him who rightly comprehends that death is no evil to know how to die delivers us from all subjection and constraint.
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I consider it equal injustice to set our heart against natural pleasures and to set our heart too much on them. We should neither pursue them, nor flee them we should accept them.
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We feel a kind of bittersweet pricking of malicious delight in contemplating the misfortunes of others.
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There is nothing which so poisons princes as flattery, nor anything whereby wicked men more easily obtain credit and favor with them.
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We are all of us richer than we think we are.
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I look upon the too good opinion that man has of himself, as the nursing mother of all false opinions, both public and private.
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Our truth of nowadays is not what is, but what others can be convinced of just as we call money not only that which is legal, but also any counterfeit that will pass.
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Judgement holds in me a magisterial seat, at least it carefully tries to. It lets my feelings go their way, both hatred and friendship, even the friendship I bear myself, without being changed and corrupted by them.
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A wellborn mind that is practiced in dealing with people makes itself thoroughly agreeable by itself. Art is nothing else but thelist and record of the productions of such minds.
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