Background Image

...

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.

-Michel De Montaigne

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

My Trade And My

Michel De Montaigne

...

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.

Views: 6

Topic

More From Michel De Montaigne

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.

He Who Falls Obstinate In His Courage, If He Falls He Fights From His Knees.

Almost All The Opinions We Have Are Taken On Authority And On Credit.

My Trade And Art Is To Live.

Life Itself Is Neither A Good Nor An Evil: Life Is Where Good Or Evil Find A Place, Depending On How You Make It For Them.

Words Of Wisdom

Those Who Have Compared Our Life To A Dream Were Right... We Were Sleeping Wake, And Waking Sleep.

Men Are Most Apt To Believe What They Least Understand.

Libertarian Party

The Corruption Of The Age Is Made Up By The Particular Contribution Of Every Individual Man; Some Contribute Treachery, Others Injustice, Atheism, Tyranny, Avarice, Cruelty, According To Their Power.

We Are, I Know Not How, Double In Ourselves, So That What We Believe We Disbelieve, And Cannot Rid Ourselves Of What We Condemn.

Every One's True Worship Was That Which He Found In Use In The Place Where He Chanced To Be.

Even In The Midst Of Compassion We Feel Within I Know Not What Tart Sweet Titillation Of Malicious Pleasure In Seeing Others Suffer; Children Have The Same Feeling.

I Will Follow The Right Side Even To The Fire, But Excluding The Fire If I Can.

The Clatter Of Arms Drowns Out The Voice Of Law.

I Quote Others In Order To Better Express Myself.

Whether The Events In Our Life Are Good Or Bad, Greatly Depends On The Way We Perceive Them.

Law Of Attraction

We Have So Much Ill Fortune As Inconstancy, Or So Much Bad Purpose As Folly, We Are Not So Full Of Evil As We Are Of Inanity; We Are Not So Wretched As We Are Base

Who Feareth To Suffer Suffereth Already, Because He Feareth.

Our Speech Has Its Weaknesses And Its Defects, Like All The Rest. Most Of The Occasions For The Troubles Of The World Are Grammatical.

Just As In Habiliments It Is A Sign Of Weakness To Wish To Make Oneself Noticeable By Some Peculiar And Unaccustomed Fashion, So, In Language, The Quest For New-fangled Phrases And Little-known Words Comes From A Puerile And Pedantic Ambition.

When I Play With My Cat, Who Knows Whether I Do Not Make Her More Sport Than She Makes Me?

No Man Profiteth But By The Loss Of Others.

He Was Doubtless An Understanding Fellow That Said, There Was No Happy Marriage But Betwixt A Blind Wife And A Deaf Husband.

Of All Our Infirmities, The Most Savage Is To Despise Our Being.

One May Be Humble Out Of Pride.

Man Is Forming Thousands Of Ridiculous Relations Between Himself And God.

Not Only Does The Wind Of Accidents Stir Me According To Its Blowing, But I Am Also Stirred And Troubled By The Instability Of My Attitude.

Example Is A Bright Looking-glass, Universal And For All Shapes To Look Into.

Experience Has Further Taught Me This, That We Ruin Ourselves By Impatience.

The Desire For Riches Is More Sharpened By Their Use Than By Their Need. Pleasing All: A Mark That Can Never Be Aimed At Or Hit.

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.

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

Most Men Are Rich In Borrowed Sufficiency: A Man May Very Well Say A Good Thing, Give A Good Answer, Cite A Good Sentence, Without At All Seeing The Force Of Either The One Or The Other.

Men Do Not Know The Natural Infirmity Of Their Mind: It Does Nothing But Ferret And Quest, And Keeps Incessantly Whirling Around, Building Up And Becoming Entangled In Its Own Work, Like Silkworms, And Is Suffocated In It. A Mouse In A Pitch Barrel...thinks It Notices From A Distance Some Sort Of Glimmer Of Imaginary Light And Truth; But While Running Toward It, It Is Crossed By So Many Difficulties And Obstacles, And Diverted By So Many New Quests, That It Strays From The Road, Bewildered.

We Cannot Fail In Following Nature.

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.

I Do Not Teach. I Relate.

Gentleness And Repose Are Paramount To Everything Else In Woman.

We Seem Ambitious God's Whole Work To Undo. ...with New Diseases On Ourselves We War, And With New Physic, A Worse Engine Far.

And Truly Philosophy Is But Sophisticated Poetry. Whence Do Those Ancient Writers Derive All Their Authority But From The Poets?

Every Man Bears The Whole Stamp Of The Human Condition.

The Laws Keep Up Their Credit, Not By Being Just, But Because They Are Laws; 'tis The Mystic Foundation Of Their Authority; They Have No Other, And It Well Answers Their Purpose. They Are Often Made By Fools; Still Oftener By Men Who, Out Of Hatred To Equality, Fail In Equity; But Always By Men, Vain And Irresolute Authors.

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.

Let Us Not Be Ashamed To Speak What We Shame Not To Think.

Among The Liberal Arts, Let Us Begin With The Art That Liberates Us.

The Shortest Way To Arrive At Glory Should Be To Do That For Conscience Which We Do For Glory. And The Virtue Of Alexander Appears To Me With Much Less Vigor In His Theater Than That Of Socrates In His Mean And Obscure. I Can Easily Conceive Socrates In The Place Of Alexander, But Alexander In That Of Socrates I Cannot.

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

It Was Truly Very Good Reason That We Should Be Beholden To God Only, And To The Favour Of His Grace, For The Truth Of So Noble A Belief, Since From His Sole Bounty We Receive The Fruit Of Immortality, Which Consists In The Enjoyment Of Eternal Beatitude.... The More We Give And Confess To Owe And Render To God, We Do It With The Greater Christianity.

Most Of Our Occupations Are Low Comedy.... We Must Play Our Part Duly, But As The Part Of A Borrowed Character. Of The Mask And Appearance We Must Not Make A Real Essence, Nor Of What Is Foreign What Is Our Very Own.

If My Intentions Were Not To Be Read In My Eyes And Voice, I Should Not Have Survived So Long Without Quarrels And Without Harm, Seeing The Indiscreet Freedom With Which I Say, Right Or Wrong, Whatever Comes Into My Head.

If I Can, I Shall Keep My Death From Saying Anything That My Life Has Not Already Said.

To Call Out For The Hand Of The Enemy Is A Rather Extreme Measure, Yet A Better One, I Think, Than To Remain In Continual Fever Over An Accident That Has No Remedy. But Since All The Precautions That A Man Can Take Are Full Of Uneasiness And Uncertainty, It Is Better To Prepare With Fine Assurance For The Worst That Can Happen, And Derive Some Consolation From The Fact That We Are Not Sure That It Will Happen.

It Costs An Unreasonable Woman No More To Pass Over One Reason Than Another; They Cherish Themselves Most Where They Are Most Wrong.

The Most Unhappy And Frail Creatures Are Men And Yet They Are The Proudest.

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.

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

The Bitterness Of The Potion, And The Abhorrence Of The Patient Are Necessary Circumstances To The Operation. It Must Be Something To Trouble And Disturb The Stomach That Must Purge And Cure It.

In His Commerce With Men I Mean Him To Include- And That Principally- Those Who Live Only In The Memory Of Books. By Means Of History He Will Frequent Those Great Souls Of Former Years. 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.

A Wise Man Loses Nothing, If He But Save Himself.

Why Did I Love Her? Because It Was Her; Because It Was Me.

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.

The World Is But A Perpetual See-saw.

I Study Myself More Than Any Other Subject. That Is My Metaphysics, That Is My Physics.

Honesty Is A Question Of Right And Wrong, Not A Matter Of Policy

The Great And Glorious Masterpiece Of Men Is To Live To The Point. All Other Things-to Reign, To Hoard, To Build-are, At Most, But Inconsiderable Props And Appendages.

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.

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

The Day Of Your Birth Leads You To Death As Well As To Life.

Each Person Calls Barbarism Whatever Is Not His Or Her Own Practice.... We May Call Cannibals Barbarians, In Respect To The Rulesof Reason, But Not In Respect To Ourselves, Who Surpass Them In Every Kind Of Barbarity.

I Had Rather Fashion My Mind Than Furnish It.

Meditation Is A Powerful And Full Study As Can Effectually Taste And Employ Themselves.

We Must Learn To Endure What We Cannot Avoid. Our Life Is Composed, Like The Harmony Of The World, Of Contrary Things, Also Of Different Tones, Sweet And Harsh, Sharp And Flat, Soft And Loud. If A Musician Liked Only One Kind, What Would He Have To Say?

Some Men Seem Remarkable To The World In Whom Neither Their Wives Nor Their Valets Saw Anything Extraordinary. Few Men Have Been Admired By Their Servants.

Getting Married Is Very Much Like Going To A Restaurant With Friends. You Order What You Want Then When You See What The Other Person Has, You Wish You Had Ordered That.

The Study Of Books Is A Drowsy And Feeble Exercise Which Does Not Warm You Up.

Who Does Not See That I Have Taken A Road Along Which I Shall Go, Without Stopping And Without Effort, As Long As There Is Ink And Paper In The World? I Cannot Keep A Record Of My Life By My Actions; Fortune Places Them Too Low. I Keep It By My Thoughts.

There Is No Conversation More Boring Than The One Where Everybody Agrees.

Habit Is A Second Nature.

Fortune Does Us Neither Good Nor Hurt; She Only Presents Us The Matter, And The Seed, Which Our Soul, More Powerfully Than She, Turns And Applies As She Best Pleases; Being The Sole Cause And Sovereign Mistress Of Her Own Happy Or Unhappy Condition.

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

The Honor Of The Conquest Is Rated By The Difficulty.

Some Impose Upon The World That They Believe That Which They Do Not; Others, More In Number, Make Themselves Believe That They Believe, Not Being Able To Penetrate Into What It Is To Believe.

No Wonder, Said An Ancient, That Chance Has So Much Power Over Us, Since It Is By Chance That We Live.

I Quote Others Only In Order The Better To Express Myself.

Children's Games Are Hardly Games. Children Are Never More Serious Than When They Play.

There Is More Ado To Interpret Interpretations Than To Interpret Things, And More Books Upon Books Than Upon Any Other Subject; We Do Nothing But Comment Upon One Another. Every Place Swarms With Commentaries; Of Authors There Is Great Scarcity.

It Is For Little Souls, That Truckle Under The Weight Of Affairs, Not To Know How Clearly To Disengage Themselves, And Not To Know How To Lay Them Aside And Take Them Up Again.

We Endeavor More That Men Should Speak Of Us, Than How And What They Speak, And It Sufficeth Us That Our Name Run In Men's Mouths, In What Manner Soever. It Stemma That To Be Known Is In Some Sort To Have Life And Continuance In Other Men's Keeping.

Books Are A Languid Pleasure.

Friendship That Possesses The Whole Soul, And There Rules And Sways With An Absolute Sovereignty, Can Admit Of No Rival.

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

As Great Enmities Spring From Great Friendships, And Mortal Distempers From Vigorous Health, So Do The Most Surprising And The Wildest Frenzies From The High And Lively Agitations Of Our Souls.

Repentance Is But A Denying Of Our Will, And An Opposition Of Our Fantasies.

The Vulgar And Common Esteem Is Seldom Happy In Hitting Right; And I Am Much Mistaken If, Amongst The Writings Of My Time, The Worst Are Not Those Which Have Most Gained The Popular Applause.

We Are Never Present With, But Always Beyond Ourselves; Fear, Desire, Hope, Still Push Us On Toward The Future.

The Finest Souls Are Those That Have The Most Variety And Suppleness.

For All Parts Of The Body That We See Fit To Expose To The Wind And Air Are Found Fit To Endure It: Face, Feet, Hands, Legs, Shoulders, Head, According As Custom Invites Us. For If There Is A Part Of Us That Is Tender And That Seems As Though It Should Fear The Cold, It Should Be The Stomach, Where Digestion Takes Place; Our Fathers Left It Uncovered, And Our Ladies, Soft And Delicate As They Are, Sometimes Go Half Bare Down To The Navel.

The Only Good Histories Are Those Written By Those Who Had Command In The Events They Describe.

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

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

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

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.

Confidence In Others' Honesty Is No Light Testimony Of One's Own Integrity.

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

He Who Lives Not To Others, Lives Little To Himself.

What A Man Hates, He Takes Seriously.

As For Extraordinary Things, All The Provision In The World Would Not Suffice.

Extraordinary Things

Custom Is A Violent And Treacherous School Mistress. She, By Little And Lithe, Slyly And Unperceived, Slips In The Foot Of Her Authority; But Having By This Gentle And Humble Beginning, With The Benefit Of Time, Fixed And Established It, She Then Unmasks A Furious And Tyrannic Countenance, Against Which We Have No More The Courage Or The Power So Much As To Lift Up Our Eyes.

Experience Has Taught Me This, That We Undo Ourselves By Impatience. Misfortunes Have Their Life And Their Limits, Their Sickness And Their Health.

Marriage Is Like A Cage; One Sees The Birds Outside Desperate To Get In, And Those Inside Equally Desperate To Get Out.

We Have No Participation In Being, Because All Human Nature Is Ever Midway Between Being Born And Dying, Giving Off Only A Vague Image And Shadow Of Itself, And A Weak And Uncertain Opinion. And If You Chance To Fix Your Thoughts On Trying To Grasp Its Essence, It Would Be Neither More Nor Less Than If Your Tried To Clutch Water.

Who So Hath His Mind On Taking, Hath It No More On What He Taketh.

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

For A Desperate Disease A Desperate Cure.

I Must Use These Great Men's Virtues As A Cloak For My Weakness.

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.

What Harm Cause Not Those Huge Draughts Or Pictures Which Wanton Youth With Chalk Or Coals Draw In Each Passage, Wall Or Stairs Of Our Great Houses, Whence A Cruel Contempt Of Our Natural Store Is Bred In Them?

We Seek And Offer Ourselves To Be Gulled.

Things Are Not Bad In Themselves, But Our Cowardice Makes Them So.

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

Lost Friendship

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.

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

A Lady Could Not Boast Of Her Chastity Who Was Never Tempted.

The Strangest, Most Generous, And Proudest Of All Virtues Is True Courage.

Wine Is The Benevolent God, Who Gives Back Gaiety To Men And Restores Youth To The Old.

There Is No Passion That So Much Transports Men From Their Right Judgments As Anger. No One Would Demur Upon Punishing A Judge With Death Who Should Condemn A Criminal Upon The Account Of His Own Choler; Why Then Should Fathers And Pedants Be Any More Allowed To Whip And Chastise Children In Their Anger? It Is Then No Longer Correction Bat Revenge. Chastisement Is Instead Of Physic To Children; And Should We Suffer A Physician Who Should Be Animated Against And Enraged At His Patient?

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.

Let Us A Little Permit Nature To Take Her Own Way; She Better Understands Her Own Affairs Than We.

Travelling Through The World Produces A Marvellous Clarity In The Judgment Of Men. We Are All Of Us Confined And Enclosed Within Ourselves, And See No Farther Than The End Of Our Nose.

Lawyers And Physicians Are An Ill Provision For Any Country.

Disappointment And Feebleness Imprint Upon Us A Cowardly And Valetudinarian Virtue.

Our Great And Glorious Masterpiece Is To Live Appropriately.

The Sage Says That All That Is Under Heaven Incurs The Same Law And The Same Fate.

Writing Does Not Cause Misery. It Is Born Of Misery.

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

Death And Dying

Others Form Man; I Tell Of Him, And Portray A Particular One, Very Ill-formed, Whom I Should Really Make Very Different From Whathe Is If I Had To Fashion Him Over Again. But Now It Is Done.

It Takes So Much To Be A King That He Exists Only As Such. That Extraneous Glare That Surrounds Him Hides Him And Conceals Him From Us; Our Sight Breaks And Is Dissipated By It Being Filled And Arrested By This Strong Light.

God Defend Me From Myself.

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

Every Man Carries The Entire Form Of Human Condition.

Human Condition

Rash And Incessant Scolding Runs Into Custom And Renders Itself Despised.

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]

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

If These Essays Were Worthy Of Being Judged, It Might Fall Out, In My Opinion, That They Would Not Find Much Favour, Either With Common And Vulgar Minds, Or With Uncommon And Eminent Ones: The Former Would Not Find Enough In Them, The Latter Would Find Too Much; They Might Manage To Live Somewhere In The Middle Region.

Man Is Certainly Crazy. He Could Not Make A Mite, And He Makes Gods By The Dozen.

No Profession Or Occupation Is More Pleasing Than The Military; A Profession Or Exercise Both Noble In Execution (for The Strongest, Most Generous And Proudest Of All Virtues Is True Valor) And Noble In Its Cause. No Utility Either More Just Or Universal Than The Protection Of The Repose Or Defense Of The Greatness Of One's Country. The Company And Daily Conversation Of So Many Noble, Young And Active Men Cannot But Be Well-pleasing To You.

Opinion Is A Powerful Party, Bold, And Without Measure.

Plenty And Indigence Depend Upon The Opinion Every One Has Of Them; And Riches, Like Glory Of Health, Have No More Beauty Or Pleasure Than Their Possessor Is Pleaded To Lend Them.

A Man Should Keep For Himself A Little Back Shop, All His Own, Quite Unadulterated, In Which He Establishes His True Freedom And Chief Place Of Seclusion And Solitude.

To Honor Him Whom We Have Made Is Far From Honoring Him That Hath Made Us.

Lend Yourself To Others, But Give Yourself To Yourself.

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.

Let Every Foot Have Its Own Shoe.

Lucius Arruntius Killed Himself, He Said, To Escape Both The Future And The Past.

Virtue Cannot Be Followed But For Herself, And If One Sometimes Borrows Her Mask To Some Other Purpose, She Presently Pulls It Away Again.

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

To Smell, Though Well, Is To Stink.

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.

It Is Indeed The Boundary Of Life, Beyond Which We Are Not To Pass; Which The Law Of Nature Has Pitched For A Limit Not To Be Exceeded.

If Not For That Of Conscience, Yet At Least For Ambition's Sake, Let Us Reject Ambition, Let Us Disdain That Thirst Of Honor And Renown, So Low And Mendicant; That It Makes Us Beg It Of All Sorts Of People.

How Many Condemnations I Have Witnessed More Criminal Than The Crime!

There Is A Certain Amount Of Purpose, Acquiescence, And Satisfaction In Nursing One's Melancholy.

The Most Beautiful Lives, To My Mind, Are Those That Conform To The Common Human Pattern, With Order, But Without Miracle And Without Eccentricity.

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.

Fortune, Seeing That She Could Not Make Fools Wise, Has Made Them Lucky.

Reason Has So Many Forms That We Do Not Know Which To Choose-experiment Has No Fewer.

The Most Certain Sign Of Wisdom Is Cheerfulness.

Poetry Reproduces An Indefinable Mood That Is More Amorous Than Love Itself. Venus Is Not So Beautiful All Naked, Alive, And Panting, As She Is Here In Virgil.

It Is The Part Of Cowardice, Not Of Courage, To Go And Crouch In A Hole Under A Massive Tomb, To Avoid The Blows Of Fortune.

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.

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

There Is The Name And The Thing; The Name Is A Sound Which Sets A Mark On And Denotes The Thing. The Name Is No Part Of The Thing Nor Of The Substance; It Is An Extraneous Piece Added To The Thing, And Outside Of It.

Wit Is A Dangerous Weapon, Even To The Possessor, If He Knows Not How To Use It Discreetly.

Water, Earth, Air, Fire, And The Other Parts Of This Structure Of Mine Are No More Instruments Of Your Life Than Instruments Of Your Death. Why Do You Fear Your Last Day? It Contributes No More To Your Death Than Each Of The Others. The Last Step Does Not Cause The Fatigue, But Reveals It. All Days Travel Toward Death, The Last One Reaches It.

Once Conform, Once Do What Others Do Because They Do It, And A Kind Of Lethargy Steals Over All The Finer Senses Of The Soul.

Lay A Beam Between These Two Towers Of Such Width As We Need To Walk On: There Is No Philosophical Wisdom Of Such Great Firmness That It Can Give Us Courage To Walk On It As We Should If It Were On The Ground.

Those Things That Are Dearest To Us Have Cost Us The Most.

I Have Here Only Made A Nosegay Of Culled Flowers, And Have Brought Nothing Of My Own But The Thread That Tied Them Together.

Our Thoughts Are Always Elsewhere; We Are Stayed And Supported By The Hope For A Better Life, Or By The Hope That Our Children Will Turn Out Well, Or That Our Name Will Be Famous In The Future, Or That We Shall Escape The Evils Of This Life, Or That Vengeance Threatens Those Who Are The Cause Of Our Death.

It Needs Courage To Be Afraid.

He Who Would Teach Men To Die Would Teach Them To Live.

There Is Nothing Of Evil In Life For Him Who Rightly Comprehends That Death Is No Evil; To Know How To Die Delivers Us From All Subjection And Constraint.

As Soon As Women Become Ours We Are No Longer Theirs.

Who Is Only Good That Others May Know It, And That He May Be The Better Esteemed When 'tis Known, Who Will Do Well But Upon Condition That His Virtue May Be Known To Men, Is One From Whom Much Service Is Not To Be Expected.

No One Should Be Subjected To Force Over Things Which Belonged To Him.

Human Wisdom Makes As Ill Use Of Her Talent When She Exercises It In Rescinding From The Number And Sweetness Of Those Pleasures That Are Naturally Our Due, As She Employs It Favorably And Well In Artificially Disguising And Tricking Out The Ills Of Life To Alleviate The Sense Of Them.

We Have The Pleasures Suitable To Our Lot; Let Us Not Usurp Those Of Greatness. Ours Are More Natural And All The More Solid And Sure For Being Humbler. Since We Will Not Do So Out Of Conscience, At Least Out Of Ambition Let Us Reject Ambition.

Human Understanding Is Marvellously Enlightened By Daily Conversation With Men, For We Are, Otherwise, Compressed And Heaped Up In Ourselves, And Have Our Sight Limited To The Length Of Our Own Noses.

My Home...it Is My Retreat And Resting Place From Wars, I Try To Keep This Corner As A Haven Against The Tempest Outside, As I Do Another Corner In My Soul.

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

Kings And Philosophers Defecate, And So Do Ladies.

The Reverse Side Of Truth Has A Hundred Thousand Shapes And No Defined Limits.

When I Quote Others I Do So In Order To Express My Own Ideas More Clearly.

T Is One And The Same Nature That Rolls On Her Course, And Whoever Has Sufficiently Considered The Present State Of Things Might Certainly Conclude As To Both The Future And The Past.

In Order Always To Learn Something From Others (which Is The Finest School There Can Be), I Observe In My Travels This Practice: I Always Steer Those With Whom I Talk Back To The Things They Know Best.

Man (in Good Earnest) Is A Marvellous Vain, Fickle, And Unstable Subject, And On Whom It Is Very Hard To Form Any Certain And Uniform Judgment.

Saying Is One Thing And Doing Is Another

The Beginnings Of All Things Are Weak And Tender. We Must Therefore Be Clear-sighted In The Beginnings, For, As In Their Budding We Discern Not The Danger, So In Their Full Growth We Perceive Not The Remedy.

No Wind Serves Him Who Addresses His Voyage To No Certain Port.

I Set Forth Notions That Are Human And My Own, Simply As Human Notions Considered In Themselves, Not As Determined And Decreed By Heavenly Ordinance.

Every Abridgement Of A Good Book Is A Fool Abridged.

Trending Author

Priyanka Chopra

Richard G. Scott

Category