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A thorny undertaking
“It is a thorny undertaking, and more so than it seems, to follow a movement so wandering as that of our mind, to penetrate the opaque depth of its innermost folds, to pick out and immobilize the innumerable flutterings that agitate it. And it is a new and extraordinary amusement, which withdraws us from the…
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All contradictions may be found in me
“anyone who observes carefully can hardly find himself twice in the same state. … If I speak of myself in different ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways. All contradictions may be found in me by some twist and in some fashion. Bashful, insolent; chaste, lascivious; talkative, taciturn; tough, delicate; clever,…
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As deep as I know how
“For I do not see the whole of anything; nor do those who promise to show it to us. Of a hundred members and faces that each thing has, I take one, sometimes only to lick it, sometimes to brush the surface, sometimes to pinch it to the bone. I give it a stab, not…
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Satiety makes it boring
“Do we think that choirboys take great pleasure in music? Not so; satiety makes it boring to them. Feasts, dances, masquerades, tourneys, delight those who do not see them often and who have looked forward to seeing them; but to anyone who makes them an ordinary pastime, the taste of them becomes insipid and unpleasant.…
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Grotesques and monstrous bodies
“And what are these things of mine, in truth, but grotesques and monstrous bodies, pieced together of divers members, without definite shape, having no order, sequence, or proportion other than accidental?” I.28 “Of friendship” (p. 164)
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Chasing after fine words
“There are some men so stupid that they go a mile out of their way to chase after a fine word, or who do not fit words to things, but seek irrelevant things which their words may fit [Quintilian]. And as another says, There are some who are led by the charm of some attractive…
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Men who live only in the memory of books
“In this association with men I mean to include, and foremost, those who live only in the memory of books.” I.26 “Of the education of children” (p. 139) [In other words, textual immortality. When we read, these people come alive again. We resurrect them.]
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Too ill-instructed to instruct others
“These are my humors and opinions; I offer them as what I believe, not what is to be believed. I aim here only at revealing myself, who will perhaps be different tomorrow, if I learn something new which changes me. I have no authority to be believed, nor do I want it, feeling myself too…
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Speaking the minds of others
“I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better.” I.26 “Of the education of children” (p.131) “Truth and reason are common to everyone, and no more belong to the man who first spoke them than to the man who says them later. … The bees plunder the flowers here…
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Some other tags
This is a post to hold some other tags that will be useful later.