Quote

The world always looks straights ahead as for me, I turn my gaze inward, I fix it there and keep it busy. Everyone looks in front of him: as for me, I look inside me: I have no business but with myself I continually observe myself, I take stock of myself, I taste myself. Others...they always go forward as for me, I roll about in myself.

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
Others
Forward
Observe
Look
Taste
Inward
Looks
Inside
Stock
Take
Turn
Roll
Always
Turns
Ahead
World
Everyone
Busy
Straights
Business
Fronts
Gaze
Keep
Front
Continually

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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Make use of life while you have it. Whether you have lived enough depends upon yourself, not on the number of your years.
Michel de Montaigne
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The world is but a perpetual see-saw.
Michel de Montaigne
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We call comeliness a mischance in the first respect, which belongs principally to the face.
Michel de Montaigne
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I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.
Michel de Montaigne
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Our speech has its weaknesses and its defects, like all the rest. Most of the occasions for the troubles of the world are grammatical.
Michel de Montaigne
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A foreign war is a lot milder than a civil war.
Michel de Montaigne
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Eloquence is an engine invented to manage and wield at will the fierce democracy, and, like medicine to the sick, is only employed in the paroxysms of a disordered state.
Michel de Montaigne
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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
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A young man ought to cross his own rules, to awake his vigor, and to keep it from growing faint and rusty. And there is no course of life so weak and sottish as that which is carried on by rule and discipline.
Michel de Montaigne
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Every movement reveals us.
Michel de Montaigne
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Everyone gives the title of barbarism to everything that is not in use in his own country.
Michel de Montaigne
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I have gathered a posy of other men’s flowers and only the thread that bonds them is my own.
Michel de Montaigne
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Socrates and then Archesilaus used to make their pupils speak first they spoke afterwards. 'Obest plerumque iss discere volunt authoritas eorum qui docent.' [For those who want to learn, the obstacle can often be the authority of those who teach]
Michel de Montaigne
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We must learn to suffer what we cannot evade.
Michel de Montaigne
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The plague of man is the opinion of knowledge. That is why ignorance is so recommended by our religion as a quality suitable to belief and obedience.
Michel de Montaigne
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The world is but a perennial movement. All things in it are in constant motion-the earth, the rocks of the Caucasus, the pyramids of Egypt-both with the common motion and with their own.
Michel de Montaigne
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The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mould
Michel de Montaigne
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We cannot fail in following nature.
Michel de Montaigne
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There is no greater enemy to those who would please than expectation.
Michel de Montaigne
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There is no more expensive thing than a free gift.
Michel de Montaigne