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Human understanding is marvellously enlightened by daily conversation with men, for we are, otherwise, compressed and heaped up in ourselves, and have our sight limited to the length of our own noses.

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
Men
Limited
Daily
Otherwise
Marvellously
Sight
Heaped
Conversation
Compressed
Understanding
Noses
Human
Enlightened
Humans
Length

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Dreams are faithful interpreters of our inclinations but there is art required to sort and understand them.
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One open way of speaking introduces another open way of speaking, and draws out discoveries, like wine and love.
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The great and glorious masterpiece of humanity is to know how to live with a purpose.
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We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.
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There is as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and others.
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A hair shirt does not always render those chaste who wear it.
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How many valiant men we have seen to survive their own reputation!
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Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre of sentiment and resolution, in the suffering of human accidents.
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The most certain sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness her state is like that of things in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene.
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It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.
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Judgement can do without knowledge: but not knowledge without judgement.
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Why dost thou complain of this world? It detains thee not thy own cowardice is the cause, if thou livest in pain.
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I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.
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The knowledge of courtesy and good manners is a very necessary study. It is like grace and beauty, that which begets liking and an inclination to love one another at the first sight.
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Rejoice in the things that are present all else is beyond thee.
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It costs an unreasonable woman no more to pass over one reason than another they cherish themselves most where they are most wrong.
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Whatever I may be, I want to be elsewhere than on paper. My art and my industry have been employed in making myself good for something my studies, in teaching me to do, not to write. I have put all my efforts into forming my life. That is my trade and my work.
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It needs courage to be afraid.
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One man may have some special knowledge at first-hand about the character of a river or a spring, who otherwise knows only what everyone else knows. Yet to give currency to this shred of information, he will undertake to write on the whole science of physics. From this fault many great troubles spring.
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Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately.
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