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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
Virtue
Wherein
Knowledge
Vessel
Keep
Decay
Enough
Preserve
Preserves
Corruption
Excellent
Impure
Drug
Tainted
More quotes by Michel de Montaigne
We wake sleeping, and sleep waking. I do not see so clearly in my sleep but as to my being awake, I never found it clear enough and free from clouds.
Michel de Montaigne
Marriage can be compared to a cage: birds outside it despair to enter, and birds within, to escape.
Michel de Montaigne
It would be better to have no laws at all, than to have too many.
Michel de Montaigne
Those that will combat use and custom by the strict rules of grammar do but jest
Michel de Montaigne
Ambition is, of all other, the most contrary humor to solitude and glory and repose are so inconsistent that they cannot possibly inhabit one and the same place and for so much as I understand, those have only their arms and legs disengaged from the crowd, their mind and intention remain engaged behind more than ever.
Michel de Montaigne
The most ordinary things, the most common and familiar, if we could see them in their true light, would turn out to be the grandest miracles.
Michel de Montaigne
The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mould
Michel de Montaigne
Such as are in immediate fear of a losing their estates, of banishment, or of slavery, live in perpetual anguish, and lose all appetite and repose whereas such as are actually poor, slaves, or exiles, ofttimes live as merrily as other folk.
Michel de Montaigne
Friendship that possesses the whole soul, and there rules and sways with an absolute sovereignty, can admit of no rival.
Michel de Montaigne
He that first likened glory to a shadow did better than he was aware of. They are both of them things excellently vain. Glory also, like a shadow, goes sometimes before the body, and sometimes in length infinitely exceeds it.
Michel de Montaigne
To say less of yourself than is true is stupidity, not modesty. To pay yourself less than you are worth is cowardice and pusillanimity.
Michel de Montaigne
Dreams are faithful interpreters of our inclinations but there is art required to sort and understand them.
Michel de Montaigne
Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.
Michel de Montaigne
Men of simple understanding, little inquisitive and little instructed, make good Christians.
Michel de Montaigne
Our own peculiar human condition is that we are as fit to be laughed at as able to laugh.
Michel de Montaigne
It is very easy to accuse a government of imperfection, for all mortal things are full of it.
Michel de Montaigne
Oh, what a valiant faculty is hope, that in a mortal subject, and in a moment, makes nothing of usurping infinity, immensity, eternity, and of supplying its masters indigence, at its pleasure, with all things he can imagine or desire!
Michel de Montaigne
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.
Michel de Montaigne
A strong imagination begetteth opportunity.
Michel de Montaigne
Virtue cannot be followed but for herself, and if one sometimes borrows her mask to some other purpose, she presently pulls it away again.
Michel de Montaigne
