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

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.
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Socrates thought and so do I that the wisest theory about the gods is no theory at all.
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Can anything be imagined so ridiculous that this miserable and wretched creature, who is not so much as master of himself, but subject to the injuries of all things, should call himself master and emperor of the world, of which he has not power to know the least part, much less to command the whole?
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Now, since everything else is furnished with the exact amount of needle and thread required to maintain its being, it is in truth incredible that we alone should be brought into the world in a defective and indigent state, in a state such that we cannot maintain ourselves without external aid.
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Tortures are a dangerous invention, and seem to be a test of endurance rather than of truth.
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A woman is no sooner ours than we are no longer hers.
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It is not my deeds that I write down, it is myself, my essence.
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I must use these great men's virtues as a cloak for my weakness.
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How many valiant men we have seen to survive their own reputation!
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We trouble our life by thoughts about death, and our death by thoughts about life.
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The memory represents to us not what we choose but what it pleases.
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It is the part of cowardice, not of courage, to go and crouch in a hole under a massive tomb, to avoid the blows of fortune.
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The height and value of true virtue consists in the facility, utility, and pleasure of its exercise so far from difficulty, that boys, as well as men, and the innocent as well as the subtle, may make it their own and it is by order and good conduct, and not by force, that it is to be acquired.
Michel de Montaigne
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Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves by railing at it and yet it is not absolutely railing against anything, to proclaim its defects, because they are in all things to be found, how beautiful or how much to be coveted soever.
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Make use of life while you have it. Whether you have lived enough depends upon yourself, not on the number of your years.
Michel de Montaigne
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There is nothing so extreme that is not allowed by the custom of some nation or other.
Michel de Montaigne
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We must not attach knowledge to the mind, we have to incorporate it there.
Michel de Montaigne
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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.
Michel de Montaigne
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All of the days go toward death and the last one arrives there.
Michel de Montaigne
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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.
Michel de Montaigne