Liberal Arts Blog — Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) — The “Father Of The Essay” (1580)
Liberal Arts Blog — Tuesday is the Joy of Literature, Language, Religion, and Culture Day
Today’s Topic: Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) — the “Father of the Essay” (1580)
The word “assay” and “essay” were once synonyms meaning “attempt” or “try.”
Montaigne changed that. With his book “Essays” — the word “essay” came to mean an introspective, personal examination of a topic, whereas “assay” evolved to mean a scientific experiment to determine the nature of a substance.
Montaigne is one of the most admired French thinkers of all time. So, what are the most powerful sentences he ever penned? Today, a collection.
So, who is your favorite essayist? their best essay? best sentence? best paragraph?
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
WHAT DO I KNOW? (QUE SAIS-JE?)
1. “Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know”.
2. “Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens,”
3. “Whenever your life ends, it is all there. The utility of living consists not in the length of day, but in the use of time: a man may have lived long, and yet lived but little.”
“IF I AM PRESSED TO SAY WHY I LOVED HIM. I FEEL IT CAN ONLY BE EXPLAINED BY REPLYING: BECAUSE IT WAS HE, BECAUSE IT WAS ME.”
1. “The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.”
2. “I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics”.
“IT IS GOOD TO RUB AND POLISH OUR BRAIN AGAINST THAT OF OTHERS” (below the Chateau de Montaigne, situated on the borders of Perigord and Bordelai, near Bergerac and Saint-Emilion, in the small commune of Saint-Michel-de-Montaigne in the Dordogne department of France)
1. “Every other knowledge is harmful to him who does not have knowledge of goodness.”
2. “I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better.”
3. “My trade and my art is living.”
“HE WHO FEARS THAT HE SUFFERS ALREADY SUFFERS WHAT HE FEARS” Below Ralph Waldo Emerson — “The American Montaigne — other huge fans have included Blaise Pascal, Sainte-Beuve, Nietzsche, Eric Hoffer…..
1. “To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave,”
2. “I speak the truth, not my fill of it, but as much as I dare speak; and I dare to do so a little more as I grow old.”
3. “I want death to find me planting my cabbages.”
FOOTNOTE — biographical tidbits, quotes on Montaigne from other writers
1. “During his lifetime, Montaigne was admired more as a statesman than as an author.” Extremely wealthy family. His father was Mayor Bordeaux. Had six daughters but only one survived infancy….”
2. Famous friendship with the French humanist poet, Etienne de la Boetie, who died at age 32.
3. Emerson: ”It seemed to me as if I had myself written the book, in some former life, so sincerely it spoke to my thought and experience.”
NB: Nietzsche — “That such a man wrote has truly augmented the joy of living on this Earth”.
Michel de Montaigne — Wikipedia
Michel de Montaigne — Wikiquote
Château de Montaigne — Wikipedia
QUOTE OF THE MONTH — Have you made your own Bible yet?
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
ATTACHMENTS BELOW:
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic)
THE LAST FOUR YEARS OF POSTS ORGANIZED THEMATICALLY INTO FOURTEEN BOOK-LENGTH PDFS:
PDF with headlines — Google Drive
Please share the coolest thing you learned this week related to words, language, literature, religion, culture.
Or, even better, the coolest or most important thing you learned in your life related to Words, Language, Literature (eg. quotes, poetry, vocabulary) that you have not yet shared.
This is your chance to make someone else’s day. Or to cement in your own mind something that you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than otherwise about something dear to your heart. Continuity is key to depth of thought.
