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A volunteer, you assign yourself specific roles and risks according to your judgement of their brilliance and importance, and you see when life itself may be justifiably devoted to them.

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
Importance
Assign
Roles
Brilliance
Risk
Volunteer
May
Judgement
Life
Risks
Devoted
Specific
According
Justifiably

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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Women are not altogether in the wrong when they refuse the rules of life prescribed to the World, for men only have established them and without their consent.
Michel de Montaigne
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We are born to inquire after truth it belongs to a greater power to possess it. It is not, as Democritus said, hid in the bottom of the deeps, but rather elevated to an infinite height in the divine knowledge.
Michel de Montaigne
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Almost all the opinions we have are taken on authority and on credit.
Michel de Montaigne
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Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head.
Michel de Montaigne
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It is an injustice that an old, broken, half-dead father should enjoy alone, in a corner of his hearth, possessions that would suffice for the advancement and maintenance of many children.
Michel de Montaigne
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Excellent memories are often coupled with feeble judgments.
Michel de Montaigne
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God is favorable to those whom he makes to die by degrees 'tis the only benefit of old age. The last death will be so much the less painful: it will kill but a quarter of a man or but half a one at most.
Michel de Montaigne
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Lay a beam between these two towers of such width as we need to walk on: there is no philosophical wisdom of such great firmness that it can give us courage to walk on it as we should if it were on the ground.
Michel de Montaigne
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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
Michel de Montaigne
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A man must either imitate the vicious or hate them.
Michel de Montaigne
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Men are nothing until they are excited.
Michel de Montaigne
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Scratching is one of nature's sweetest gratifications, and nearest at hand.
Michel de Montaigne
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Fie on the eloquence that leaves us craving itself, not things!
Michel de Montaigne
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The height and value of true virtue consists in the facility, utility, and pleasure of its exercise so far from difficulty, that boys, as well as men, and the innocent as well as the subtle, may make it their own and it is by order and good conduct, and not by force, that it is to be acquired.
Michel de Montaigne
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The virtue of the soul does not consist in flying high, but in walking orderly.
Michel de Montaigne
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I have ever loved to repose myself, whether sitting or lying, with my heels as high or higher than my head.
Michel de Montaigne
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There is no wish more natural than the wish to know.
Michel de Montaigne
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Who is it that does not voluntarily exchange his health, his repose, and his very life for reputation and glory? The most useless, frivolous, and false coin that passes current among us.
Michel de Montaigne
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Whatever can be done another day can be done today.
Michel de Montaigne
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For among other things he had been counseled to bring me to love knowledge and duty by my own choice, without forcing my will, and to educate my soul entirely through gentleness and freedom.
Michel de Montaigne