A Few Interesting Quotes from Montaigne

A Few Interesting Quotes from Montaigne

A stack of more spiritual books have arrived on my shelves and were eagerly awaited, seemingly forever delayed. One includes Essays: Michel De Montaigne. Besides having influenced the existentialist movement and authors like Schaupenhauer, his style in translation by J.M. Cohen is appealing and energetic discourse.

So rather than merely read this book cover to cover, I wanted to extract three or four outstanding excerpts randomly and ponder over them here as Montaigne himself might have done with the authors on his bookshelf.

The first is: "When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is amusing herself with me, or I with her?" Quite simply, I still miss Pusky, a little cat I adopted in the desert and then found a home for before I left three years later. Three years onward, I still miss that cat and conversely wonder which one of us was taking care of the other sometimes.

"It is impossible to hold a straight argument with a fool...What is the good of setting out in pursuit of truth in the company of a man whose pace and walking power are inadequate?" This would appear relevant in the rambling, peg-legged, wild perusal of blogs these days. The reality is that readers of them often appear to have a very limited attention span, and I would wonder if increased technological development is not actually diminishing intellectual attention spans among the herds. One must be outlandishly clown-like to attract the attention of foppish, entertainment-minded readers. So many readers appear to be incapable of paying any attention to books these days, and among them, only the top ten lists appear to hold sway over general reading patterns.

"With all our efforts we cannot imitate the nest of the very smallest bird, its structure, its beauty, or the suitability of its form, nor even the web of a lowly spider." What we can do, is buy new, more comfortable beds from time to time. I am enjoying the fully affordable, luxurious refinement of a wonderfully Korean-crafted, full two mattress creation called an Ace Bed. A man has no need for constantly focusing upon his own creative inadequacies when compared to the humble nest-building fowl or crocheting spider if at the end of a day of workings, readings, and play, he can then fully slumber in tranquility. I fully endorse this company. http://www.acebed.co.kr

"It once pleased me to see, in one place or another, men who had, in the name of religion, made vows of ignorance as well, as chastity, poverty, and penitence." I would add to this list any number of evangelicals, advertisers, marketers, and side-show touts.