Mort Mather Author Writer Organic Farmer Philosopher Thinker Restauranteur

How to improve your life and save the world.

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

quotes from Essays by Montaigne

I wanted to add some quotes to my website but I'm having trouble getting in so I'm posting some of my favorites from Montaigne's Essays here. You might enjoy the quotes from other favorite books as well.

All the glory that I aspire to in my life is to have lived it tranquilly...according to me. Since philosophy has not been able to find away to tranquillity that is suitable to all, let everyone seek it individually. [P 471]

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself. [p 178]

On the one hand Nature pushes us on to it [sex], having attached to this desire the most noble, useful, and pleasant of all her operations; and on the other hand she lets us accuse and shun it as shameless and indecent, blush at it, and recommend abstinence. Are we not brutes to call brutish the operation that makes us?
The various nations in their religions have many conventions in common, such as sacrifices, lamps, burning incense, fasts, offerings, and among other things, the condemnation of this action. All opinions come to this, besides the very widespread practice of cutting off the foreskin, which is a punishment of the act. Perhaps we are right to blame ourselves for making such a stupid production as man, to call the action shameful, and shameful the parts that are used for it. (At present mine are truly shameful and pitiful.) [p 669]

...in truth there is no greater, more constant, or more uncouth absurdity, than to become worked up and stung by the absurdities of the world....In short, we must live among the living, and let the river flow under the bridge, without caring, or at the very least, without being upset by it. [p709]

Those who go to the other extreme, of taking delight in themselves, of valuing what they have above other things and recognizing nothing as more beautiful than what they see, if they are not wiser than we, are in truth happier. [p 723]

Oh, what a vile and stupid study it is to study one's money, to take pleasure in handling it, weighing it, and counting it over and over! That is the way averice makes its approach. [p 727]

Not by the calculation of your income, but by your manner of living and your culture, is your wealth really to be reckoned {Cicero] [p724]

I should have thought as much of giving pleasure as of gaining profit. [p 741]

It is an absolute perfection and virtually divine to know how to enjoy our being rightfully. We seek other conditions because we do not understand the use of our own, and go outside of ourselves because we do not know what it is like inside. Yet there is no use our mounting on stilts, for on stilts we must still walk on our own legs. And on the loftiest throne in the world we are still sitting only on our own rump. [p 857]

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