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We call comeliness a mischance in the first respect, which belongs principally to the face.

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
Face
Faces
Firsts
Mischance
First
Principally
Belongs
Respect
Beauty
Call

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The land of marriage has this peculiarity: that strangers are desirous of inhabiting it, while its natural inhabitants would willingly be banished from thence.
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Every movement reveals us.
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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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Almost all the opinions we have are taken on authority and on credit.
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I love those historians that are either very simple or most excellent. Such as are between both (which is the most common fashion), it is they that spoil all they will needs chew our meat for us and take upon them a law to judge, and by consequence to square and incline the story according to their fantasy.
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The curiosity of knowing things has been given to man for a scourge.
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Example is a bright looking-glass, universal and for all shapes to look into.
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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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Silence and modesty are very valuable qualities in conversation.
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True freedom is to have power over oneself for everything.
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Wisdom has its excesses, and has no less need of moderation than folly.
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The only good histories are those that have been written by the persons themselves who commanded in the affairs whereof they write.
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Writing does not cause misery. It is born of misery.
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Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head.
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I am much afraid that we shall have very greatly hastened the decline and ruin of the New World by our contagion, and that we willhave sold it our opinions and our arts very dear.
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Children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.
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In my opinion, the most fruitful and natural play of the mind is conversation. I find it sweeter than any other action in life and if I were forced to choose, I think I would rather lose my sight than my hearing and voice. The study of books is a drowsy and feeble exercise which does not warm you up.
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One may be humble out of pride.
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Others form man I tell of him, and portray a particular one, very ill-formed, whom I should really make very different from whathe is if I had to fashion him over again. But now it is done.
Michel de Montaigne
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The common notions that we find in credit around us and infused into our souls by our fathers' seed, these seem to be the universal and natural ones. Whence it comes to pass that what is off the hinges of custom, people believe to be off the hinges of reason.
Michel de Montaigne