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God Might Grant Us Riches, Honours, Life, And Even Health, To Our Own Hurt; For Every Thing That Is Pleasing To Us Is Not Always Good For Us. If He Sends Us Death, Or An Increase Of Sickness, Instead Of A Cure, Vvrga Tua Et Baculus, Tuus Ipsa Me Consolata Sunt. "thy Rod And Thy Staff Have Comforted Me," He Does It By The Rule Of His Providence, Which Better And More Certainly Discerns What Is Proper For Us Than We Can Do; And We Ought To Take It In Good Part, As Coming From A Wise And Most Friendly Hand.

-Michel De Montaigne

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God Might Grant Us

Michel De Montaigne

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God Might Grant Us Riches, Honours, Life, And Even Health, To Our Own Hurt; For Every Thing That Is Pleasing To Us Is Not Always Good For Us. If He Sends Us Death, Or An Increase Of Sickness, Instead Of A Cure, Vvrga Tua Et Baculus, Tuus Ipsa Me Consolata Sunt. "thy Rod And Thy Staff Have Comforted Me," He Does It By The Rule Of His Providence, Which Better And More Certainly Discerns What Is Proper For Us Than We Can Do; And We Ought To Take It In Good Part, As Coming From A Wise And Most Friendly Hand.

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Who Ever Saw A Doctor Use The Prescription Of His Colleague Without Cutting Out Or Adding Something?

Scratching Is One Of Nature's Sweetest Gratifications, And Nearest At Hand.

You Have Your Face Bare; I Am All Face.

Long Life, And Short, Are By Death Made All One; For There Is No Long, Nor Short, To Things That Are No More.

The Souls Of Emperors And Cobblers Are Cast In The Same Mould

I Love Those Historians That Are Either Very Simple Or Most Excellent. Such As Are Between Both (which Is The Most Common Fashion), It Is They That Spoil All; They Will Needs Chew Our Meat For Us And Take Upon Them A Law To Judge, And By Consequence To Square And Incline The Story According To Their Fantasy.

Now There Cannot Be First Principles For Men, Unless The Divinity Has Revealed Them; All The Rest--beginning, Middle, And End--isnothing But Dreams And Smoke.

The Diversity Of Physical Arguments And Opinions Embraces All Sorts Of Methods.

For Table-talk, I Prefer The Pleasant And Witty Before The Learned And The Grave; In Bed, Beauty Before Goodness.

When I Express My Opinions It Is So As To Reveal The Measure Of My Sight Not The Measure Of The Thing.

Not Because Socrates Said So, But Because It Is In Truth My Own Disposition — And Perchance To Some Excess — I Look Upon All Men As My Compatriots, And Embrace A Pole As A Frenchman, Making Less Account Of The National Than Of The Universal And Common Bond.

There Is No Passion So Contagious As That Of Fear.

If You Don't Know How To Die, Don't Worry; Nature Will Tell You What To Do On The Spot, Fully And Adequately. She Will Do This Job Perfectly For You; Don't Bother Your Head About It.

What We Are Told Of The Inhabitants Of Brazil, That They Never Die But Of Old Age, Is Attributed To The Tranquility And Serenity Of Their Climate; I Rather Attribute It To The Tranquility And Serenity Of Their Souls, Which Are Free From All Passion, Thought, Or Any Absorbing And Unpleasant Labors. Those People Spend Their Lives In An Admirable Simplicity And Ignorance, Without Letters, Without Law, Without King, Without Any Manner Of Religion.

Seeing That The Senses Cannot Decide Our Dispute, Being Themselves Full Of Uncertainty, We Must Have Recourse To Reason; There Is No Reason But Must Be Built Upon Another Reason: So Here We Are Retreating Backwards To Infinity.

Habituation Puts To Sleep The Eye Of Our Judgment.

A Little Folly Is Desirable In Him That Will Not Be Guilty Of Stupidity.

Lawyers And Physicians Are An Ill Provision For Any Country.

And Not To Serve For A Table-talk.

Is There A Polity Better Ordered, The Offices Better Distributed, And More Inviolably Observed And Maintained, Than That Of Bees?

Habit Is Second Nature.

We Must Reserve A Back Shop All Our Own Entirely Free, In Which To Establish Our Real Liberty And Our Principal Retreat And Solitude.

This Idea Is More Surely Understood By Interrogation; What Do I Know? Which I Bear As My Motto With The Emblem Of A Pair Of Scales.

When A Roman Was Returning From A Trip, He Used To Send Someone Ahead To Let His Wife Know, So As Not To Surprise Her In The Act.

The Soul Which Has No Fixed Purpose In Life Is Lost; To Be Everywhere, Is To Be Nowhere.

Lost Friendship

The Wise Man Should Withdraw His Soul Within, Out Of The Crowd, And Keep It In Freedom And Power To Judge Things Freely; But As For Externals, He Should Wholly Follow The Accepted Fashions And Forms.

No Man Is A Hero To His Own Valet.

The Land Of Marriage Has This Peculiarity: That Strangers Are Desirous Of Inhabiting It, While Its Natural Inhabitants Would Willingly Be Banished From Thence.

It Is A Disaster That Wisdom Forbids You To Be Satisfied With Yourself And Always Sends You Away Dissatisfied And Fearful, Whereas Stubbornness And Foolhardiness Fill Their Hosts With Joy And Assurance.

For A Desperate Disease A Desperate Cure.

The Body Enjoys A Great Share In Our Being, And Has An Eminent Place In It. Its Structure And Composition, Therefore, Are Worthy Of Proper Consideration.

It Has Never Occurred To Me To Wish For Empire Or Royalty, Nor For The Eminence Of Those High And Commanding Fortunes. My Aim Lies Not In That Direction; I Love Myself Too Well.

And Obstinacy Is The Sister Of Constancy, At Least In Vigour And Stability.

Memory Is A Wonderfully Useful Tool, And Without It Judgement Does Its Work With Difficulty; It Is Entirely Lacking In Me.... Now,the More I Distrust My Memory, The More Confused It Becomes. It Serves Me Better By Chance Encounter; I Have To Solicit It Nonchalantly. For If I Press It, It Is Stunned; And Once It Has Begun To Totter, The More I Probe It, The More It Gets Mixed Up And Embarrassed. It Serves Me At Its Own Time, Not At Mine.

It Is An Absolute Perfection And Virtually Divine To Know How To Enjoy Our Being Rightfully.

The Wise Man Lives As Long As He Ought, Not So Long As He Can.

The Soul That Has No Established Aim Loses Itself

The Judgment Is An Utensil Proper For All Subjects, And Will Have An Oar In Everything.

I Enjoy Books As Misers Enjoy Treasures, Because I Know I Can Enjoy Them Whenever I Please.

It Needs Good Management To Enjoy Life. I Enjoy It Twice As Much As Others, For The Measure Of Enjoyment Depends On The Greater Or Less Attention That We Give To It...the Shorter My Possession Of Life The Deeper And Fuller I Must Make It.

Even Opinion Is Of Force Enough To Make Itself To Be Espoused At The Expense Of Life.

The Common Notions That We Find In Credit Around Us And Infused Into Our Souls By Our Fathers' Seed, These Seem To Be The Universal And Natural Ones. Whence It Comes To Pass That What Is Off The Hinges Of Custom, People Believe To Be Off The Hinges Of Reason.

My Trade And My Art Is Living. He Who Forbids Me To Speak About It According To My Sense, Experience, And Practice, Let Him Orderthe Architect To Speak Of Buildings Not According To Himself But According To His Neighbor; According To Another Man's Knowledge, Not According To His Own.

There Is Nothing More Notable In Socrates Than That He Found Time, When He Was An Old Man, To Learn Music And Dancing, And Thought It Time Well Spent.

Pythagoras Used To Say That Life Resembles The Olympic Games: A Few People Strain Their Muscles To Carry Off A Prize; Others Bring Trinkets To Sell To The Crowd For Gain; And Some There Are, And Not The Worst, Who Seek No Other Profit Than To Look At The Show And See How And Why Everything Is Done; Spectators Of The Life Of Other People In Order To Judge And Regulate Their Own.

Other People Do Not See You At All, But Guess At You By Uncertain Conjectures.

A Man May By Custom Fortify Himself Against Pain, Shame, And Suchlike Accidents; But As To Death, We Can Experience It But Once, And Are All Apprentices When We Come To It

Fie On The Eloquence That Leaves Us Craving Itself, Not Things!

No Man Profiteth But By The Loss Of Others.

And I Loathe People Who Find It Harder To Put Up With A Gown Askew Than With A Soul Askew And Who Judge A Man By His Bow, His Bearing And His Boots.

We Ought To Love Temperance For Itself, And In Obedience To God Who Has Commanded It And Chastity; But What I Am Forced To By Catarrhs, Or Owe To The Stone, Is Neither Chastity Nor Temperance.

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.

In My Opinion, Every Rich Man Is A Miser.

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Congratulations

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.

Men Throw Themselves On Foreign Assistances To Spare Their Own, Which, After All, Are The Only Certain And Sufficient Ones.

Princes Give Mee Sufficiently, If They Take Nothing From Me, And Doe Me Much Good, If They Doe Me No Hurt: It Is All I Require Of Them.

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The Dispersing And Scattering Our Names Into Many Mouths, We Call Making Them More Great.

There Is No Wish More Natural Than The Wish To Know.

Peoples Nurtured On Freedom And Self-government Judge Any Other Form Of Polity To Be Deformed And Unnatural. Those Who Are Used To Monarchy Do The Same .

It Is Not Reasonable That Art Should Win The Place Of Honor Over Our Great And Powerful Mother Nature. We Have So Overloaded The Beauty And Richness Of Her Works By Our Inventions That We Have Quite Smothered Her.

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Happiness Involves Working Toward Meaningful Goals.

Gentleness And Repose Are Paramount To Everything Else In Woman.

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My Art And Profession Is To Live.

It Is In The Enjoyment And Not In Mere Possession That Makes For Happiness.

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We Easily Enough Confess In Others An Advantage Of Courage, Strength, Experience, Activity, And Beauty; But An Advantage In Judgment We Yield To None.

I Do Not Understand; I Pause; I Examine.

Whatever Is Preached To Us, And Whatever We Learn, We Should Still Remember That It Is Man That Gives, And Man That Receives; It Is A Mortal Hand That Presents It To Us, It Is A Mortal Hand That Accepts It.

I Consider It Equal Injustice To Set Our Heart Against Natural Pleasures And To Set Our Heart Too Much On Them. We Should Neither Pursue Them, Nor Flee Them; We Should Accept Them.

All Permanent Decisions Are Made In A Temporary State Of Mind.

On The Highest Throne In The World, We Still Sit Only On Our Own Bottom.

Behold The Hands, How They Promise, Conjure, Appeal, Menace, Pray, Supplicate, Refuse, Beckon, Interrogate, Admire, Confess, Cringe, Instruct, Command, Mock And What Not Besides, With A Variation And Multiplication Of Variation Which Makes The Tongue Envious.

We Are More Unhappy To See People Ahead Of Us Than Happy To See People Behind Us.

A Man Should Think Less Of What He Eats And More With Whom He Eats Because No Food Is So Satisfying As Good Company.

When We Have Got It, We Want Something Else.

The Profit We Possess After Study Is To Have Become Better And Wiser.

Give Me The Provisions And Whole Apparatus Of A Kitchen, And I Would Starve.

I Find No Quality So Easy For A Man To Counterfeit As Devotion, Though His Life And Manner Are Not Conformable To It; The Essence Of It Is Abstruse And Occult, But The Appearances Easy And Showy.

I Listen With Attention To The Judgment Of All Men; But So Far As I Can Remember, I Have Followed None But My Own.

One Must Be A Little Foolish If One Does Not Want To Be Even More Stupid.

Every Day I Hear Stupid People Say Things That Are Not Stupid.

Nothing Prints More Lively In Our Minds Than Something We Wish To Forget.

It Is A Dangerous And Fateful Presumption, Besides The Absurd Temerity That It Implies, To Disdain What We Do Not Comprehend. For After You Have Established, According To Your Fine Undertstanding, The Limits Of Truth And Falsehood, And It Turns Out That You Must Necessarily Believe Things Even Stranger Than Those You Deny, You Are Obliged From Then On To Abandon These Limits.

The Strength Of Any Plan Depends On The Time. Circumstances And Things Eternally Shift And Change.

The Recognition Of Virtue Is Not Less Valuable From The Lips Of The Man Who Hates It, Since Truth Forces Him To Acknowledge It; And Though He May Be Unwilling To Take It Into His Inmost Soul, He At Least Decks Himself Out In Its Trappings.

I Give My Opinion Not As Being Good, But As Being My Own.

How Many Things We Held Yesterday As Articles Of Faith Which Today We Tell As Fables.

One Should Be Ever Booted And Spurred And Ready To Depart.

Death And Dying

The Curiosity Of Knowing Things Has Been Given To Man For A Scourge.

It Is A Stupid Presumption To Go About Despising And Condemning As False Anything That Seems To Us Improbable; This Is A Common Fault In Those Who Think They Have More Intelligence Than The Crowd.

When I Dance, I Dance; When I Sleep, I Sleep; Yes, And When I Walk Alone In A Beautiful Orchard, If My Thoughts Drift To Far-off Matters For Some Part Of The Time For Some Other Part I Lead Them Back Again To The Walk, The Orchard, To The Sweetness Of This Solitude, To Myself.

There Is No Greater Enemy To Those Who Would Please Than Expectation.

We Are All Patchwork, And So Shapeless And Diverse In Composition That Each Bit, Each Moment, Plays Its Own Game.

Let [children] Be Able To Do All Things, And Love To Do Only The Good.

The Human Face Is A Weak Guarantee; Yet It Deserves Some Consideration. And If I Had To Whip The Wicked, I Would Do So More Severely To Those Who Belied And Betrayed The Promises That Nature Had Implanted On Their Brows; I Would Punish Malice More Harshly When It Was Hidden Under A Kindly Appearance.

I Have Never Known A Greater Miracle, Or Monster, Than Myself.

All The World Knows Me In My Book, And My Book In Me.

The Thing I Fear Most Is Fear.

Dreams Are Faithful Interpreters Of Our Inclinations; But There Is Art Required To Sort And Understand Them.

I Would Like To Suggest That Our Minds Are Swamped By Too Much Study And By Too Much Matter Just As Plants Are Swamped By Too Much Water Or Lamps By Too Much Oil; That Our Minds, Held Fast And Encumbered By So Many Diverse Preoccupations, May Well Lose The Means Of Struggling Free, Remaining Bowed And Bent Under The Load; Except That It Is Quite Otherwise: The More Our Souls Are Filled, The More They Expand; Examples Drawn From Far-off Times Show, On The Contrary, That Great Soldiers Ad Statesmen Were Also Great Scholars.

After They Had Accustomed Themselves At Rome To The Spectacles Of The Slaughter Of Animals, They Proceeded To Those Of The Slaughter Of Men, To The Gladiators.

Health Is A Precious Thing, And The Only One, In Truth, Meriting That A Man Should Lay Out Not Only His Time, Sweat, Labor And Goods, But Also Life Itself To Obtain It.

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.

A Man Must Either Imitate The Vicious Or Hate Them.

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.

It Is Setting A High Value Upon Our Opinions To Roast Men And Women Alive On Account Of Them.

If To Take Up Books Were To Take Them In, And If To See Them Were To Consider Them, And To Run Through Them Were To Grasp Them, I Should Be Wrong To Make Myself Out Quite As Ignorant As I Say I Am.

'tis The Sharpness Of Our Mind That Gives The Edge To Our Pains And Pleasures.

There Is No Desire More Natural Than The Desire Of Knowledge. (il N'est Desir Plus Naturel Que Le Desir De Connaissance)

Intemperance Is The Plaque Of Sensuality, And Temperance Is Not Its Bane But Its Seasoning.

Fear Sometimes Adds Wings To The Heels, And Sometimes Nails Them To The Ground, And Fetters Them From Moving.

There Is, Nevertheless, A Certain Respect And A General Duty Of Humanity That Ties Us, Not Only To Beasts That Have Life And Sense, But Even To Trees And Plants.

It Is No Hard Matter To Get Children; But After They Are Born, Then Begins The Trouble, Solicitude, And Care Rightly To Train, Principle, And Bring Them Up.

The Ceaseless Labour Of Your Life Is To Build The House Of Death.

Their Pupils And Their Little Charges Are Not Nourished And Fed By What They Learn: The Learning Is Passed From Hand To Hand With Only One End In View: To Show It Off, To Put Into Our Accounts To Entertain Others With It, As Though It Were Merely Counters, Useful For Totting Up And Producing Statements, But Having No Other Use Or Currency. 'apud Alios Loqui Didicerunt, Non Ipsi Secum' [they Have Learned How To Talk With Others, Not With Themselves]

Fortune, To Show Us Her Power In All Things, And To Abate Our Presumption, Seeing She Could Not Make Fools Wise, Has Made Them Fortunate.

One Man May Have Some Special Knowledge At First-hand About The Character Of A River Or A Spring, Who Otherwise Knows Only What Everyone Else Knows. Yet To Give Currency To This Shred Of Information, He Will Undertake To Write On The Whole Science Of Physics. From This Fault Many Great Troubles Spring.

Nature Clasps All Her Creatures In A Universal Embrace; There Is Not One Of Them Which She Has Not Plainly Furnished With All Means Necessary To The Conservation Of Its Being.

Whom Conscience, Ne'er Asleep, Wounds With Incessant Strokes, Not Loud, But Deep.

The Good Opinion Of The Vulgar Is Injurious.

As By Some Might Be Saide Of Me: That Here I Have But Gathered A Nosegay Of Strange Floures, And Have Put Nothing Of Mine Unto It, But The Thred To Binde Them. Certes, I Have Given Unto Publike Opinion, That These Borrowed Ornaments Accompany Me; But I Meane Not They Should Cover Or Hide Me.

God Sends The Cold According To The Coat.

Is It Not Enough To Make Me Come Back To Life Out Of Spite, To Have Someone Who Spat In My Face While I Existed Come And Rub My Feet When I Am Beginning To Exist No Longer?

Learning Is Not To Be Tacked To The Mind, But We Must Fuse And Blend Them Together, Not Merely Giving The Mind A Slight Tincture, But A Thorough And Perfect Dye. And If We Perceive No Evident Change And Improvement, It Would Be Better To Leave It Alone; Learning Is A Dangerous Weapon, And Apt To Wound Its Master If It Be Wielded By A Feeble Hand, And By One Not Well Acquainted With Its Use.

Lend Yourself To Others, But Give Yourself To Yourself.

A Strong Memory Is Commonly Coupled With Infirm Judgment.

Sometimes It Is A Good Choice Not To Choose At All.

If You Want It To Be So, History Can Be A Waste Of Time; It Can Also Be, If You Want It To Be So, A Study Bearing Fruit Beyond Price.

Words Of Wisdom

Not Being Able To Govern Events, I Govern Myself, And Apply Myself To Them If They Will Not Apply Themselves To Me.

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.

No Two Men Ever Judged Alike Of The Same Thing, And It Is Impossible To Find Two Opinions Exactly Similar, Not Only In Different Men But In The Same Men At Different Times.

In My Opinion, The Most Fruitful And Natural Play Of The Mind Is 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.

If Others Surpass You In Knowledge, In Charm, In Strength, In Fortune, You Have Other Causes To Blame For It; But If You Yield Tothem In Stoutness Of Heart You Have Only Yourself To Blame.

The Only Good Histories Are Those That Have Been Written By The Persons Themselves Who Commanded In The Affairs Whereof They Write.

A Man Must Live In The World And Make The Best Of It, Such As It Is.

..a Man May Live Long, Yet Live Very Little. Satisfaction In Life Depends Not On The Number Of Your Years, But On Your Will.

Satisfaction In Life

It Is Fear That I Stand Most In Fear Of, In Sharpness It Exceeds Every Other Feeling.

Man Is Quite Insane. He Wouldn?t Know How To Create A Maggot, And He Creates Gods By The Dozen.

Nor Is It Enough To Toughen Up His Soul; You Must Also Toughen Up His Muscles.

For Truth Itself Has Not The Privilege To Be Spoken At All Times And In All Sorts.

Poverty Of Goods Is Easily Cured; Poverty Of Soul, Impossible.

Tis The Taste Of Effeminacy That Disrelishes Ordinary And Accustomed Things.

We Need To Interpret Interpretations More Than To Interpret Things.

It Is Good To Rub And Polish Our Brain Against That Of Others.

All Opinions In The World Agree In This, That Pleasure Is Our End, Although They Differ As To The Means Of Attaining It.

For Truth Itself Does Not Have The Privilege To Be Employed At Any Time And In Every Way; Its Use, Noble As It Is, Has Its Circumscriptions And Limits.

If Faces Were Not Alike, We Could Not Distinguish Men From Beasts; If They Were Not Different, We Could Not Tell One Man From Another.

Nothing Is So Firmly Believed As What We Least Know.

Truly Man Is A Marvelously Vain, Diverse, And Undulating Object. It Is Hard To Found Any Constant And Uniform Judgment On Him.

There Is No Knowledge So Hard To Acquire As The Knowledge Of How To Live This Life Well And Naturally.

Can Anything Be Imagined So Ridiculous That This Miserable And Wretched Creature, Who Is Not So Much As Master Of Himself, But Subject To The Injuries Of All Things, Should Call Himself Master And Emperor Of The World, Of Which He Has Not Power To Know The Least Part, Much Less To Command The Whole?

We Can Be Knowledgeable With Other Men's Knowledge, But We Cannot Be Wise With Other Men's Wisdom.

Time Steals Away Without Any Inconvenience.

We Are Neither Obstinately Nor Wilfully To Oppose Evils, Nor Truckle Under Them For Want Of Courage, But That We Are Naturally To Give Way To Them, According To Their Condition And Our Own, We Ought To Grant Free Passage To Diseases; And I Find They Stay Less With Me Who Let Them Alone. And I Have Lost Those Which Are Reputed The Most Tenacious And Obstinate Of Their Own Defervescence, Without Any Help Or Art, And Contrary To Their Rules. Let Us A Little Permit Nature To Take Her Own Way; She Better Understands Her Own Affairs Than We.

And If Nobody Reads Me, Shall I Have Wasted My Time, When I Have Beguiled So Many Idle Hours With Such Pleasant And Profitable Reflections?

The Easy, Gentle, And Sloping Path . . . Is Not The Path Of True Virtue. It Demands A Rough And Thorny Road.

Presumption Is Our Natural And Original Malady. The Most Vulnerable And Frail Of All Creatures Is Man, And At The Same Time The Most Arrogant.

I Had Rather Complain Of Ill-fortune Than Be Ashamed Of Victory.

Other Passions Have Objects To Flatter Them, And Seem To Content And Satisfy Them For A While; There Is Power In Ambition, Pleasure In Luxury, And Pelf In Covetousness; But Envy Can Gain Nothing But Vexation.

No Pleasure Is Fully Delightful Without Communications, And No Delight Absolute Except Imparted.

We Are More Solicitous That Men Speak Of Us, Than How They Speak.

Whoever Will Be Cured Of Ignorance, Let Him Confess It.

Lying Is A Disgraceful Vice, And One That Plutarch Paints In Most Disgraceful Colors, When He Says That It Is "affording Testimony That One First Despises God, And Then Fears Men." It Is Not Possible More Happily To Describe Its Horrible, Disgusting, And Abandoned Nature; For Can We Imagine Anything More Vile Than To Be Cowards With Regard To Men, And Brave With Regard To God.

Age Imprints More Wrinkles In The Mind Than It Does On The Face.

In Love, 'tis No Other Than Frantic Desire For That Which Flies From Us.

In Plain Truth, It Is No Want, But Rather Abundance That Creates Avarice.

The Concern That Some Women Show At The Absence Of Their Husbands, Does Not Arise From Their Not Seeing Them And Being With Them, But From Their Apprehension That Their Husbands Are Enjoying Pleasures In Which They Do Not Participate, And Which, From Their Being At A Distance, They Have Not The Power Of Interrupting.

Ceremony Forbids Us To Express By Words Things That Are Lawful And Natural, And We Obey It; Reason Forbids Us To Do Things Unlawful And Ill, And Nobody Obeys It.

One Should Always Have One's Boots On And Be Ready To Leave.

I Want Death To Find Me Planting My Cabbages.

I Want To Be Seen Here In My Simple, Natural, Ordinary Fashion, Without Straining Or Artifice; For It Is Myself That I Portray... I Am Myself The Matter Of My Book.

My Errors Are By Now Natural And Incorrigible; But The Good That Worthy Men Do The Public By Making Themselves Imitable, I Shall Perhaps Do By Making Myself Evitable.

To Divert Myself From A Troublesome Fancy, It Is But To Run To My Books; They Presently Fix Me To Them, And Drive The Other Out Of My Thoughts, And Do Not Mutiny To See That I Have Only Recourse To Them For Want Of Other More, Real, Natural, And Lively Conveniences; They Always Receive Me With The Same Kindness.

I See Several Animals That Live So Entire And Perfect A Life, Some Without Sight, Others Without Hearing: Who Knows Whether To Us Also One, Two, Or Three, Or Many Other Senses, May Not Be Wanting?

Obstinacy And Contention Are Common Qualities, Most Appearing In, And Best Becoming, A Mean And Illiterate Soul.

It Is A Monstrous Thing That I Will Say, But I Will Say It All The Same: I Find In Many Things More Restraint And Order In My Morals Than In My Opinions, And My Lust Less Depraved Than My Reason.

That Is Why Bias Jested With Those Who Were Going Through The Perils Of A Great Storm With Him And Calling On The Gods For Help: "shut Up," He Said, "so That They Do Not Realize That You Are Here With Me.

I Am One Of Those Who Hold That Poetry Is Never So Blithe As In A Wanton And Irregular Subject.

But As Nature Is The Best Guide, Teaching Must Be The Development Of Natural Inclinations, For Which Purpose The Teacher Must Watch His Pupil And Listen To Him, Not Continually Bawl Words Into His Ears As If Pouring Water Into A Funnel. Good Teaching Will Come From A Mind Well Made Rather Than Well Filled.

It Is Not Without Good Reason, That He Who Has Not A Good Memory Should Never Take Upon Him The Trade Of Lying.

Let Us Permit Nature To Have Her Way. She Understands Her Business Better Than We Do.

I Never Rebel So Much Against France As Not To Regard Paris With A Friendly Eye; She Has Had My Heart Since My Childhood... I Love Her Tenderly, Even To Her Warts And Her Spots. I Am French Only By This Great City: The Glory Of France, And One Of The Noblest Ornaments Of The World.

It Is A Thorny Undertaking, And More So Than It Seems, To Follow A Movement So Wandering As That Of Our Mind, To Penetrate The Opaque Depths Of Its Innermost Folds, To Pick Out And Immobilize The Innumerable Flutterings That Agitate It.

One Open Way Of Speaking Introduces Another Open Way Of Speaking, And Draws Out Discoveries, Like Wine And Love.

Pleasure Itself Is Painful At The Bottom.

Nothing Fixes A Thing So Intensely In The Memory As The Wish To Forget It.

We Call Comeliness A Mischance In The First Respect, Which Belongs Principally To The Face.

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