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Age
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Nature should have been pleased to have made this age miserable, without making it also ridiculous.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Ambition
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Ambition is not a vice of little people.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Argument & Debate
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He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.
-Michel de Montaigne
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There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Assumptions
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Socrates thought and so do I that the wisest theory about the gods is no theory at all.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Authors & Writing
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All the world knows me in my book, and may book in me.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Beauty
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The beauty of stature is the only beauty of men.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Belief
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How many things served us but yesterday as articles of faith, which today we deem but fables?
-Michel de Montaigne
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Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Bravery
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The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Cats
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When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime for her more than she is to me?
-Michel de Montaigne
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Chastity
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An unattempted lady could not vaunt of her chastity.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Children
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For truly it is to be noted, that children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words azimuth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Communication
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It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.
-Michel de Montaigne
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There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Confidence
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The confidence in another man's virtue is no light evidence of a man's own, and God willingly favors such a confidence.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Confidence in another person's virtue is no light evidence of your own.
-Michel de Montaigne
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True it is that she who escapeth safe and unpolluted from out the school of freedom, giveth more confidence of herself than she who comet sound out of the school of severity and restraint.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Conversation
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In my opinion, the most fruitful and natural play of the mind is in conversation. I find it sweeter than any other action in life; and if I were forced to choose, I think I would rather lose my sight than my hearing and voice. The study of books is a drowsy and feeble exercise which does not warm you up.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Criticism
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Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves with railing against it.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Customs
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The way of the world is to make laws, but follow custom.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Death
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I want death to find me planting my cabbage
-Michel de Montaigne
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Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. My advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
-Michel de Montaigne
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Books by and about Michel de Montaigne