To free oneself from fear and hope, belief and superstition. To be free of convictions and parties.
He forgets the books he has read, has no memory for dates and misplaces the momentous events in his life. Like a river, all flows over him, leaving nothing behind: no deep conviction, no solid opinion, nothing fixed, nothing stable.
He is at one and the same time all and nothing, always different and yet ever the same, the Montaigne of 1550, 1560, 1570, 1580, the Montaigne of yesterday.
To be free of customs: “Custom clouds the true face of things”.
The writer in him is only the shadow of the man, though so often we observe men whose art of writing is so great, but whose art of living is so modest.
I do not subscribe to this communal error of judging a man according to the way I perceive things.
He desires only to preserve a few memories, assemble a few thoughts, to dream more than live and patiently await death, calmly preparing for it.
Life is servitude if we lack the freedom to die.
The true essence of freedom is that it can never restrict the freedom of another.
It is true: Montaigne achieved little else in his life aside from posing the question: “How should I live?
Nun erst lebte die Stadt, die mich so fremd, so sinnlos umbraust hatte, nun erst lebte ich wieder, das ich Dich nahe ahnte, Dich, meinen ewigen Traum.
For only he who lives his life as a mystery is truly alive.
But travelling, even as far as to other worlds under other stars, did not allow me to escape Europe and my anxieties. However far I went from Europe, its fate came with me.
Gratitude is so seldom found, and those who are most grateful cannot express it, are silent in their confusion, or ashamed, or sometimes seem ungracious just to conceal their feelings.“...
Perhaps only those who are strangers to passion know such sudden outbursts of emotion in their few passionate moments, moments of emotion like an avalanche or a hurricane; whole years fall from one’s own breast with the fury of powers left unused.
There is always a mysterious conflict in every artist; if life treats him roughly he longs for peace and calm, but if he comes into safe harbour he longs to be back in the turmoil.
And once again I feel, in horror, how weak, poor and flabby a substance whatever we call by the names of soul, spirit or feeling must be after all, not to mention what we describe as pain, since all this, even to the utmost degree, is insufficient to destroy the suffering flesh of the tormented body entirely – for we do survive such hours and our blood continues to pulse, instead of dying and falling like a tree struck by lightning.“...
For a society is always most cruel to those who disclose and reveal its secrets, when through dishonesty society itself has outraged Nature.
Nothing was done to us – we were simply placed in a complete void, and everyone knows that nothing on earth exerts such pressure on the human soul as a void.
It’s not your fault. But whose fault is it? Why are we always the ones who suffer? We didn’t do anything, we didn’t do anything to anyone, but every step we take is a trap.