Michel de Montaigne Quotes - Page 30

• Men of simple understanding, little inquisitive and little instructed, make good Christians.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Christian, Simple, Men

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• Laws gain their authority from actual possession and custom: it is perilous to go back to their origins; laws, like our rivers, get greater and nobler as they roll along: follow them back upstream to their sources and all you find is a tiny spring, hardly recognizable; as time goes by it swells with pride and grows in strength.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Spring, Pride, Law

  Michel de Montaigne (1991). “The essays of Michel de Montaigne”, Lane, Allen

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• To make a crooked stick straight, we bend it the contrary way.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Reform, Way, Sticks

  Michel de Montaigne (2013). “Michel de Montaigne: Selected Essays”, p.190, Courier Corporation

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• I agree that we should work and prolong the functions of life as far as we can, and hope that Death may find me planting my cabbages, but indifferent to him and still more to the unfinished state of my garden.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Death, Work, Garden

  Michel de Montaigne (1946). “The essays”

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• No one should be subjected to force over things which belonged to him.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Should, Force

  Michel de Montaigne (1991). “The essays of Michel de Montaigne”, Lane, Allen

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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.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Suicide, Pain, Complaining

  Michel de Montaigne (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne (Illustrated)”, p.584, Delphi Classics

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• But the touch or company of any man whatsoever stirreth up their heat, which in their solitude was hushed and quiet, and lay as cinders raked up in ashes.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, Solitude, Lust

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• I have a vocabulary all my own. I "pass the time" when it is wet and disagreeable. When it is fine I do not wish to pass it; I ruminate it and hold on to it. We should hasten over the bad, and settle upon the good.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Time, Vocabulary, Self

  Michel de Montaigne (1946). “The essays”

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• Great authors, when they write about causes, adduce not only those they think are true but also those they do not believe in, provided they have some originality and beauty. They speak truly and usefully enough if they speak ingeniously.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Beauty, Truth, Believe

  Michel de Montaigne (1976). “The Complete Essays of Montaigne”

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• I was not long since in a company where I was not who of my fraternity brought news of a kind of pills, by true account, composed of a hundred and odd several ingredients; whereat we laughed very heartily, and made ourselves good sport; for what rock so hard were able to resist the shock or withstand the force of so thick and numerous a battery?

  Michel de Montaigne

  Sports, Medicine, Rocks

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• Tortures are a dangerous invention, and seem to be a test of endurance rather than of truth.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Endurance, Tests, Violence

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.266, Stanford University Press

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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

  Wisdom, Philosophical, Two

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.449, Stanford University Press

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• It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Mind, Contractions, Weariness

  Michel de Montaigne (1980). “Essays”

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• Report followeth not all goodness, except difficulty and rarity be joined thereto.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Goodness, Difficulty, Reports

  Michel de Montaigne (1903*). “Essays of Montaigne”

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• Marriage, a market which has nothing free but the entrance.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Funny, Marriage, Witty

  Attributed to "Essais" by Michel de Montaigne, 1595.

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• It is for little souls, that truckle under the weight of affairs, not to know how clearly to disengage themselves, and not to know how to lay them aside and take them up again.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Soul, Weight, Littles

  Michel de Montaigne (1860). “The Works of Michael de Montaigne: Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy”, p.541

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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?

  Michel de Montaigne

  Kings, Age, Theatre

  "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations" by John Bartlett, 10th ed., 1919.

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• The secret counsels of princes are a troublesome burden to such as have only to execute them.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Advice, Secret, Burden

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, p. 10-11, Essays, III. 1, 1922.

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• Our own peculiar human condition is that we are as fit to be laughed at as able to laugh.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Laughter, Laughing, Peculiar

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• You have your face bare; I am all face.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Faces, Your Face

  Michel de Montaigne (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne (Illustrated)”, p.435, Delphi Classics

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• Plenty and indigence depend upon the opinion every one has of them; and riches, like glory of health, have no more beauty or pleasure than their possessor is pleaded to lend them.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Riches, Opinion, Glory

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• I cruelly hate cruelty, both by nature and reason, as the worst of all the vices. But then I am so soft in this that I cannot seea chicken's neck wrung without distress, and cannot bear to hear the squealing of a hare between the teeth of my hounds.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Hate, Hunting, Vices

  Michel de Montaigne (1946). “The essays”

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• The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mould

  Michel de Montaigne

  Soul, Cobblers, Mould

  Michel de Montaigne (1856). “The Works of Michael de Montaigne: Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy”, p.244

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• The most universal quality is diversity.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Diversity, Quality, Universal

  Michel de Montaigne (1872). “All the Essays of Michael Seigneur de Montaigne”, p.656

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• Man is forming thousands of ridiculous relations between himself and God.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, Ridiculous, Relation

  "Essais" by Michel de Montaigne, Book II, Ch. 12, 1595.

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