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

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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If people must be talking about me, I would have it to be truthfully and justly. I would willingly return from the next world to contradict any person who described me other than I was, although he did it to honour me.
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There are truths on this side of the Pyrenees which are falsehoods on the other
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Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately.
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What fear has once made me will, I am bound still to will when without fear.
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Nobody is exempt from saying stupid things, the harm is to do it presumptuously.
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To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquillity in our conduct.
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After a tongue has once got the knack of lying, it is not to be imagined how impossible almost it is to reclaim it. Whence it comes to pass, that we see some men, who are otherwise very honest, so subject to this vice.
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Love to his soul gave eyes he knew things are not as they seem. The dream is his real life the world around him is the dream.
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To make a crooked stick straight, we bend it the contrary way.
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A straight oar looks bent in the water. It matters not merely that we see a thing, but how we see it.
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If I speak of myself in different ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways.
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Every period of life has its peculiar prejudices whoever saw old age, that did not applaud the past, and condemn the present times?
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Is it not a noble farce, wherein kings, republics, and emperors have for so many ages played their parts, and to which the whole vast universe serves for a theatre?
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The daughter-in-law of Pythagoras said that a woman who goes to bed with a man ought to lay aside her modesty with her skirt, and put it on again with her petticoat
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Friendship that possesses the whole soul, and there rules and sways with an absolute sovereignty, can admit of no rival.
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Excellent memories are often coupled with feeble judgments.
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The archer who overshoots his mark does no better than he who falls short of it.
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I had rather complain of ill-fortune than be ashamed of victory.
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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.
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I have gathered a posy of other men’s flowers and only the thread that bonds them is my own.
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