"Is there a polity better ordered, the offices better distributed, and more inviolably observed and maintained, than that of bees?"
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Quote collection
Michel de Montaigne quotes (page 20 of 49)
979 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky."
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"I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of those contradictions out for myself."
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"Meditation is a rich and powerful method of study for anyone who knows how to examine his mind."
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"He that had never seen a river imagined the first he met to be the sea; and the greatest things that have fallen within our knowledge we conclude the extremes that nature makes of the kind."
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"[Marriage] happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out."
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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."
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"Unless a man feels he has a good enough memory, he should never venture to lie."
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"Books are pleasant, but if by being over-studious we impair our health and spoil our good humour, two of the best things we have, let us give it over. I, for my part, am one of those who think no fruit derived from them can recompense so great a loss."
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"I honor most those to whom I show least honor; and where my soul moves with great alacrity, I forget the proper steps of ceremony."
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"Were I to live my life over again, I should live it just as I have done. I neither complain of the past, nor do I fear the future."
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"Whenever a new finding is reported to the world people say - It is probably not true. Later on, when the reliability of a new finding has been fully confirmed, people say - OK, it may be true but it has no real significance. At last, when even the significance of the finding is obvious to everybody, people say - Well, it might have some significance, but the idea is not new."
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"When we have got it, we want something else."
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"I love a gay and sociable wisdom, and shun harshness and austerity in behaviour, holding every surly countenance suspect."
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"It is setting a high value upon our opinions to roast men and women alive on account of them."
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"We are never present with, but always beyond ourselves; fear, desire, hope, still push us on toward the future."
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"Every day I hear stupid people say things that are not stupid."
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"The world is but a perpetual see-saw."
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"Greatness of soul consists not so much in soaring high and in pressing forward, as in knowing how to adapt and limit oneself."
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"No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately."
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