Quote

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.

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
Enough
Preserve
Preserves
Corruption
Excellent
Impure
Drug
Tainted
Virtue
Wherein
Knowledge
Vessel
Keep
Decay

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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Since philosophy is the art which teaches us how to live, and since children need to learn it as much as we do at other ages, why do we not instruct them in it?
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I am one of those who hold that poetry is never so blithe as in a wanton and irregular subject.
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My errors are by now natural and incorrigible but the good that worthy men do the public by making themselves imitable, I shall perhaps do by making myself evitable.
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The ceaseless labour of your life is to build the house of death.
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I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.
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If I am to serve as an instrument of deceit, at least let it be with a clear conscience. I do not want to be considered either so affectionate or so loyal a servant as to be found fit to betray anyone.
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Nobody is exempt from saying stupid things, the harm is to do it presumptuously.
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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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Valor is strength, not of legs and arms, but of heart and soul it consists not in the worth of our horse or our weapons, but in our own.
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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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Socrates, who was a perfect model in all great qualities, ... hit on a body and face so ugly and so incongruous with the beauty of his soul, he who was so madly in love with beauty.
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Glory consists of two parts: the one in setting too great a value upon ourselves, and the other in setting too little a value upon others.
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True it is that she who escapeth safe and unpolluted from out the school of freedom, giveth more confidence of herself than she who comet sound out of the school of severity and restraint.
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In order always to learn something from others (which is the finest school there can be), I observe in my travels this practice: I always steer those with whom I talk back to the things they know best.
Michel de Montaigne
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Virtue rejects facility to be her companion. She requires a craggy, rough and thorny way.
Michel de Montaigne
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Ceremony forbids us to express by words things that are lawful and natural, and we obey it reason forbids us to do things unlawful and ill, and nobody obeys it.
Michel de Montaigne
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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.
Michel de Montaigne
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Once you have decided to keep a certain pile, it is no longer yours for you can't spend it.
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Scratching is one of nature's sweetest gratifications, and nearest at hand.
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If others examined themselves attentively, as I do, they would find themselves, as I do, full of inanity and nonsense. Get rid of it I cannot without getting rid of myself.
Michel de Montaigne