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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
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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
Clear
Free
Sleeping
Found
Waking
Enough
Awake
Never
Wake
Clearly
Clouds
Sleep
More quotes by Michel de Montaigne
The easy, gentle, and sloping path . . . is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road.
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
For there is no air that men so greedily draw in, that diffuses itself so soon, and that penetrates so deep as that of license.
Michel de Montaigne
It is a human tendency to measure truth and error by our capacity.
Michel de Montaigne
This idea is more surely understood by interrogation WHAT DO I KNOW? which I bear as my motto with the emblem of a pair of scales.
Michel de Montaigne
Nature has, herself, I fear, imprinted in man a kind of instinct to inhumanity.
Michel de Montaigne
Women when they marry buy a cat in the bag.
Michel de Montaigne
Learning must not only lodge with us: we must marry her.
Michel de Montaigne
Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition.
Michel de Montaigne
Rash and incessant scolding runs into custom and renders itself despised.
Michel de Montaigne
Shame on all eloquence which leaves us with a taste for itself and not for its substance.
Michel de Montaigne
I must accommodate my history to the hour: I may presently change, not only by fortune, but also by intention.
Michel de Montaigne
We judge a horse not only by its pace on a racecourse, but also by its walk, nay, when resting in its stable.
Michel de Montaigne
Each person calls barbarism whatever is not his or her own practice.... We may call Cannibals barbarians, in respect to the rulesof reason, but not in respect to ourselves, who surpass them in every kind of barbarity.
Michel de Montaigne
We have no participation in Being, because all human nature is ever midway between being born and dying, giving off only a vague image and shadow of itself, and a weak and uncertain opinion. And if you chance to fix your thoughts on trying to grasp its essence, it would be neither more nor less than if your tried to clutch water.
Michel de Montaigne
If love and ambition should be in equal balance, and come to jostle with equal force, I make no doubt but that the last would win the prize.
Michel de Montaigne
Greatness of soul consists not so much in soaring high and in pressing forward, as in knowing how to adapt and limit oneself.
Michel de Montaigne
A lady could not boast of her chastity who was never tempted.
Michel de Montaigne
There is a huge gulf between the man who follows the conventions and laws of his country and the man who sets out to regiment them and to change them.
Michel de Montaigne
Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.
Michel de Montaigne
