...what we ordinarily call friends & friendships are nothing but acquaintanceships...in the friendship I speak of, our souls mingle and blend with each other so completely that they efface the seam that joined them...If you press me to tell why I loved him, I feel that this cannot be expressed, except by answering: Because it was he, because it was I.
(from "Of friendship", Book I, Essay 28)
#coffeeandabook #montaigne #essays #classics
Life can be painful, confusing. Finding your own way & your own place in this life, with a million distractions promising enlightenment, and a million more promising escape. I think The Essays are slowly becoming a refuge for me - not to blindly accept what he says, but as a conversation. His essays are steeped in study & experience. Reading Montaigne, although it takes work, I'm finding that I can - and should - be my own captain in rough waters.
...it takes a lot of self-love and presumption to have such esteem for one's own opinions that to establish them one must overthrow the public peace and introduce so many inevitable evils, and such a horrible corruption of morals...and introduce them into one's own country.
No one dies before his time. The time you leave behind was no more yours than that which passed before your birth...wherever your life ends, it is all there. The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use; some men have lived long, and lived little; attend to it while you are in it. It lies in your will, not in the number of years, for you to have lived enough.
(from "That to philosophize is to learn to die", Book I, Essay 20)
...let us learn to meet [death] steadfastly and combat it...to begin to strip it of its greatest advantage against us...let us rid it of its strangeness, come to know it, get used to it...and let us never allow ourselves to be so carried away by pleasure that we do not sometimes remember in how many ways this happiness of ours is a prey to death...it is uncertain where death awaits us; let us await it everywhere.
Happy the man who has regulated his needs in such just measure that his wealth can satisfy them without his care and trouble...and without it interrupting his pursuit of other occupations better suited to him...each man is as well or as badly off as he thinks he is.
Anger at things that happen shows small wit;
For all our wrath concerns them not a bit.
(author unknown)
Francis Bacon once said that "...some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few are to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention."
I believe I have embarked on a work of the third type, and I know it will take a long while to finish. But when that day comes, that book will truly be mine.
We owe subjection...to all kings, for that concerns their office; but we do not owe esteem... Let us make this concession to the political order: to suffer them patiently if they are unworthy, by commending their indifferent actions if their authority needs our support. But, our dealings over, it is not right to deny to justice and to our liberty the expression of our true feelings.
pickDefinitely a #blameitonlitsy purchase, but one that‘s useful/appropriate for our times. Maybe Montaigne is the way to help us find our way back to each other. #litsyatoz #letterM
