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We may so seize on virtue, that if we embrace it with an overgreedy and violent desire, it may become vicious.
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
Seize
Vicious
Violent
Embrace
Virtue
Desire
Become
May
More quotes by Michel de Montaigne
Obstinacy and heat in argument are surest proofs of folly. Is there anything so stubborn, obstinate, disdainful, contemplative, grave, or serious, as an ass?
Michel de Montaigne
I put forward formless and unresolved notions, as do those who publish doubtful questions to debate in the schools, not to establish the truth but to seek it.
Michel de Montaigne
Silence and modesty are very valuable qualities in conversation.
Michel de Montaigne
I do not teach. I relate.
Michel de Montaigne
Human wisdom makes as ill use of her talent when she exercises it in rescinding from the number and sweetness of those pleasures that are naturally our due, as she employs it favorably and well in artificially disguising and tricking out the ills of life to alleviate the sense of them.
Michel de Montaigne
Travelling through the world produces a marvellous clarity in the judgment of men. We are all of us confined and enclosed within ourselves, and see no farther than the end of our nose.
Michel de Montaigne
When all is summed up, a man never speaks of himself without loss his accusations of himself are always believed his praises never.
Michel de Montaigne
Let us permit nature to have her way. She understands her business better than we do.
Michel de Montaigne
To behave rightly, we ourselves should never lay a hand on our servants as long as our anger lasts. Things will seem different to us when we have quieted and cooled down.
Michel de Montaigne
Learning must not only lodge with us: we must marry her.
Michel de Montaigne
In the examples that I here bring in of what I have [read], heard, done or said, I have refrained from daring to alter even the smallest and most indifferent circumstances. My conscience falsifies not an iota for my knowledge I cannot answer.
Michel de Montaigne
Amongst all other vices there is none I hate more than cruelty, both by nature and judgment, as the extremest of all vices.
Michel de Montaigne
Necessity is a violent school-mistress.
Michel de Montaigne
There is nothing so noble and so right as to play our human life well and fitly, nor anything so difficult to learn as how to livethis life well and according to Nature.
Michel de Montaigne
The corruption of the age is made up by the particular contribution of every individual man some contribute treachery, others injustice, atheism, tyranny, avarice, cruelty, according to their power.
Michel de Montaigne
If faces were not alike, we could not distinguish men from beasts if they were not different, we could not tell one man from another.
Michel de Montaigne
It is a thorny undertaking, and more so than it seems, to follow a movement so wandering as that of our mind, to penetrate the opaque depths of its innermost folds, to pick out and immobilize the innumerable flutterings that agitate it.
Michel de Montaigne
The religion of my doctor or my lawyer cannot matter. That consideration has nothing in common with the functions of the friendship they owe me.
Michel de Montaigne
I love a friendship that flatters itself in the sharpness and vigor of its communications.
Michel de Montaigne
He whose mouth is out of taste says the wine is flat.
Michel de Montaigne
