My Blog

Tag: man

  • Tough love

    “We need very strong ears to hear ourselves judged frankly; and because there are few who can endure frank criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to criticize us perform a remarkable act of friendship; for to undertake to wound and offend a man for his own good is to have a healthy…

  • To listen to ourselves

    “The life of Caesar has no more to show us than our own; an emperor’s or an ordinary man’s, it is still a life subject to all human accidents. Let us only listen: we tell ourselves all we most need.” III.13 Of experience (p. 1001)

  • Opinions

    “There is nothing on which men are commonly more intent than on making a way for their opinions.” Of Cripples. 957

  • Children

    “Children are numbered among the things that we have no great reason to desire, especially at this time when it would be so hard to make them good.” III.9 “Of vanity” (p. 929) I wonder what Montaigne would think if he saw what it was like to raise children today, in our world.

  • The goal of our career is death

    “The goal of our career is death. It is the necessary object of our aim. If it frightens us, how is it possible to go forward without feverishness? The remedy of the common herd is not to think about it. But from what brutish stupidity can come so gross a blindness!” I.20 “That to philosophize…

  • Myself now and myself a while ago

    “Myself now and myself a while ago are indeed two; but when better, I simply cannot say. It would be fine to be old if we traveled only toward improvement. It is a drunkard’s motion, staggering, dizzy, wobbling, or that of reeds that the wind stirs haphazardly as it pleases.” III.9 “Of vanity” (p.895)

  • For the benefit of the inferior

    “The authority to judge is not given for the sake of the judge, but for the sake of the person judged. A superior is never appointed for his own benefit, but for the benefit of the inferior, and a doctor for the sick, not for himself. All authority, like all art, has its end outside…

  • Fear from want of judgment

    “Fear sometimes arises from want of judgment as well as from want of courage.”   III. 6 “Coaches” (p. 832).

  • I portray passing

    “I cannot keep my subject still. It goes along befuddled and staggering, with a natural drunkenness. I take it in this condition, just as it is at the moment I give my attention to it. I do not portray being: I portray passing.”   III 2. “Of repentance” (p. 740).

  • Complaints

    “It is cruelty to require of us so composed a bearing. If we play a good game, it is a small matter that we make a bad face. If the body finds relief in complaining, let it do so.” II.37 “Of the resemblance of children to fathers” (p. 699)