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The Essays of Montaigne [592]

By Root 23982 0
willingly be lucky as wise

I would be rich of myself, and not by borrowing

I write my book for few men and for few years

Idleness is to me a very painful labour

Idleness, the mother of corruption

If a passion once prepossess and seize me, it carries me away

If I am talking my best, whoever interrupts me, stops me

If I stand in need of anger and inflammation, I borrow it

If it be a delicious medicine, take it

If it be the writer's wit or borrowed from some other

If nature do not help a little, it is very hard

If they can only be kind to us out of pity

If they chop upon one truth, that carries a mighty report

If they hear no noise, they think men sleep

If to philosophise be, as 'tis defined, to doubt

Ignorance does not offend me, but the foppery of it

Impotencies that so unseasonably surprise the lover

Ill luck is good for something

Imagne the mighty will not abase themselves so much as to live

Imitating other men's natures, thou layest aside thy own

Immoderate either seeking or evading glory or reputation

Impose them upon me as infallible

Impostures: very strangeness lends them credit

Improperly we call this voluntary dissolution, despair

Impunity pass with us for justice

In everything else a man may keep some decorum

In ordinary friendships I am somewhat cold and shy

In solitude, be company for thyself—Tibullus

In sorrow there is some mixture of pleasure

In the meantime, their halves were begging at their doors

In this last scene of death, there is no more counterfeiting

In those days, the tailor took measure of it

In war not to drive an enemy to despair

Inclination to love one another at the first sight

Inclination to variety and novelty common to us both

Incline the history to their own fancy

Inconsiderate excuses are a kind of self-accusation

Inconveniences that moderation brings (in civil war)

Indiscreet desire of a present cure, that so blind us

Indocile liberty of this member

Inquisitive after everything

Insensible of the stroke when our youth dies in us

Insert whole sections and pages out of ancient authors

Intelligence is required to be able to know that a man knows not

Intemperance is the pest of pleasure

Intended to get a new husband than to lament the old

Interdict all gifts betwixt man and wife

Interdiction incites, and who are more eager, being forbidden

It (my books) may know many things that are gone from me

It happens, as with cages, the birds without despair to get in

It is better to die than to live miserable

It is no hard matter to get children

It is not a book to read, 'tis a book to study and learn

It is not for outward show that the soul is to play its part

It's madness to nourish infirmity

Jealousy: no remedy but flight or patience

Judge by justice, and choose men by reason

Judge by the eye of reason, and not from common report

Judgment of duty principally lies in the will

Judgment of great things is many times formed from lesser thing

Justice als takes cognisance of those who glean after the reaper

Killing is good to frustrate an offence to come, not to revenge

Knock you down with the authority of their experience

Knot is not so sure that a man may not half suspect it will slip

Knowledge and truth may be in us without judgment

Knowledge is not so absolutely necessary as judgment

Knowledge of others, wherein the honour consists

Known evil was ever more supportable than one that was, new

Ladies are no sooner ours, than we are no more theirs

Language: obscure and unintelligible in wills and contracts

Lascivious poet: Homer

Last death will kill but a half or a quarter of a man

Law: breeder of altercation and division

Laws (of Plato on travel), which forbids it after threescore

Laws cannot subsist without mixture of injustice

Laws do what they can, when they cannot do what they would

Laws keep up their credit, not for being just—but as laws

Lay the fault on the voices of those who speak to me

Laying themselves low to avoid the danger of falling

Learn my own debility and the treachery of my understanding

Learn the theory from

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