Revision as of 13:25, 3 November 2024

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Where

Talk teasers:

from Montaigne's study

Here's a thought. Consider it. If you find parts that make no sense, try to make sense of them. Look things up. Understand the passage. Then tell yourself and others what you think in response. If that's, "Eh....," that's fine, pass over it — the world holds many thoughts. If you have a response, great! and if you have a little time, others may be interested if you explain it in the comment box.

Maxims Montaigne painted on the rafters

[I] Remain poised in the balance…
Undecided…
One thing being no more than another,
[I am] without inclination.

(Sextus Empiricus)<comment-streams id="G8" />

I do not understand.
I stop.
I examine.
[I take for my guide] the ways of the world and the experiences of the senses.

(Sextus Empiricus)<comment-streams id="G8" />

One lives but a little, shelter yourself from evil.

(Theognis, from Joannes Stobaeus, Greek anthologist of the 5th Century AD)<comment-streams id="G8" />

The ultimate wisdom of man is to consider things as good, and for the rest to be untroubled.

Ecclesiastes<comment-streams id="G8" />

Autonomy is the only just pleasure.

(Sotades, from Stobaeus)<comment-streams id="G8" />

God gave to man the desire for knowledge for the sake of tormenting him.

Ecclesiastes 1<comment-streams id="G8" />

Happy is he who has fortunes and reason.

(Menander–Mon. 340, from Stobaeus)<comment-streams id="G8" />

As the wind puffs out empty wineskins, so pride of opinion, foolish men.

(Socrates in Stobaeus–Florilgium: Of Arrogance)<comment-streams id="G8" />

Never say that marriage brings more joys than tears.

(Euripides–Alcestis 147, from Stobaeus)<comment-streams id="G8" />

Everything under the sun follows the same law and the same destiny.

Ecclesiastes 9.<comment-streams id="G8" />

It is no more in this way than in that, or in neither.

(Aulus Gellius, via Henricius Stephanus’ 1562 annotated edition of Sextus Empiricus)<comment-streams id="G8" />

It is hard!; but that which we are not permitted to correct is rendered lighter by patience.

(Horace–Odes 1.24.19)<comment-streams id="G8" />

The notion of everything, large and small, of all the innumerable creatures of God, is to be found within us.

Ecclesiastes 3[.1]<comment-streams id="G8" />

For I see that we are but phantoms,
all we who live, or fleeting shadows.

(Sophocles–Ajax, 125-6)<comment-streams id="G8" />

O wretched minds of men! O blind hearts! in what darkness of life and in how great dangers is passed this term of life whatever its duration.

(Lucretius–De Natura Rerum: II.14)<comment-streams id="G8" />

To not think at all is the softest life,
Because not thinking is the most painless evil.

(Sophocles)<comment-streams id="G8" />

What man will account himself great,
Whom a chance occasion destroys utterly?

(Euripides, in Stobaeus- Of Arrogance)<comment-streams id="G8" />

All things, together with heaven and earth and sea, are nothing to the sum of the universal sum.

(Lucretius–De Natura Rerum, VI.678-9)<comment-streams id="G8" />

The fool has more hope of wisdom than the man who calls himself wise.

Proverbs 26<comment-streams id="G8" />

Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? There is more hope of a fool than of him.

<comment-streams id="G8" />

No new delight may be forged by living on.

(Lucretius–De Natura Rerum)<comment-streams id="G8" />

You who know nothing of how the soul marries the body, you therefore know nothing of God’s works.

Ecclesiastes 11[.5]<comment-streams id="G8" />

It is possible and it is not possible.

(Sextus Empiricus–Hypotyposes)<comment-streams id="G8" />

The good is admirable.

(Plato, via Sextus Empiricus)<comment-streams id="G8" />

A man of clay.

(Saint Paul, via Erasmus)<comment-streams id="G8" />

Impiety follows pride like a dog. [lit.: 'like a father is followed’]

(Socrates, from Stobaeus)<comment-streams id="G8" />

Be not wise in your own conceits.

(Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, 12.)<comment-streams id="G8" />

Neither fear nor desire [your] last day.

(Martial–Epigrams, X.47)<comment-streams id="G8" />

God permits no one but Himself to magnify Himself.

(Herodotus–VII.10, from Stobaeus)<comment-streams id="G8" />

I shelter where the storm drives me.

(Horace–Epistles I.i.14)<comment-streams id="G8" />

You are unaware if your interest is here rather than there, or if they are alike in value.

Ecclesiastes, 11.<comment-streams id="G8" />

I am a man and nothing human is foreign to me.

(Terence–'The Self-Tormentor’)<comment-streams id="G8" />

Be not overwise lest you become senseless.

Ecclesiastes 7[.16].<comment-streams id="G8" />

If any man thinks he knows anything, he knows nothing.

First letter of Paul to the Corinthians, 8[.2].<comment-streams id="G8" />

If any man thinks himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself.

Letter of Paul to the Galatians, 6[.3].<comment-streams id="G8" />

Be no wiser than is necessary, but be wise in moderation.

Letter of Paul to the Romans, 12[.3].<comment-streams id="G8" />

No one has ever known the truth and no one will know it.

(Xenophanes, in Diogenes Laertius and Sextus Empiricus)<comment-streams id="G8" />

Who knows whether that which we call dying is living,and living is dying?

(Euripides–fragment of the Phrixus, from Stobaeus- Of the Praise of Death)<comment-streams id="G8" />

Nothing is more beautiful than being just, but nothing is more pleasant than being healthy.

(Theognis, from Stobaeus)<comment-streams id="G8" />

All things are too difficult for man to understand them.

Ecclesiastes 1.<comment-streams id="G8" />

Wide is the range of man’s speech, this way and that.

(Homer–Iliad 20.249, from Diogenes Laertius)<comment-streams id="G8" />

The whole race of man has overgreedy ears.

(Lucretius–De Natura Rerum IV.598)<comment-streams id="G8" />

How great is the worthlessness of things.

(Persius, I.1)<comment-streams id="G8" />

All is vanity.

Ecclesiastes 1.<comment-streams id="G8" />

To keep within due measure and hold fast the end and follow nature.

(Lucan–Pharsalia II.381-2)<comment-streams id="G8" />

Earth and ashes, wherefrom your pride?

Ecclesiastes 10<comment-streams id="G8" />

Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes.

Isaiah 5[.21]<comment-streams id="G8" />

Character is fate. [lit. 'To each the destiny his character makes.’]

(Cornelius Nepos, from Erasmus- Adages)<comment-streams id="G8" />

Enjoy pleasantly present things, others are beyond thee.

Ecclesiastes 3[.22]<comment-streams id="G8" />

To every opinion an opinion of equal weight is opposed.

(Sextus Empiricus–Hypotyposes)<comment-streams id="G8" />

Our mind wanders in darkness, and, blind, cannot discern the truth.

(Michel de l’Hôpital–Poem: ‘Ad Margaritam, Regis sororem’ )<comment-streams id="G8" />

God has made man like a shadow, of which who shall judge after the setting of the sun?

Ecclesiastes 7.<comment-streams id="G8" />

The only certainty is that nothing is certain, and that nothing is less noble or more proud than man.

(Pliny–Naturalis Historia II.5)<comment-streams id="G8" />

Of all the works of God nothing is more unknown to any man than the track of the wind.

Ecclesiastes 11.<comment-streams id="G8" />

Each has his own tastes, Gods and men alike.

(Euripides–Hippolytus 104, from Erasmus)<comment-streams id="G8" />

That on which you so pride yourself will be your ruin, you who think yourself to be somebody.

(Menander)<comment-streams id="G8" />

That which worries men are not thingsbut that which they think about them.

(Epictetus–Enchiridion, from Stobaeus- Of Death)<comment-streams id="G8" />

It is fitting for a mortal to have thoughts appropriate to men.

(Sophocles–fragment from The Colchians)<comment-streams id="G8" />

Why with designs for the far future do you weary a mind that is unequal to them?

(Horace–Carmina II.11)<comment-streams id="G8" />

As you are ignorant of the way of the spirit, so you do not know the works of God.

Ecclesiastes 11.<comment-streams id="G8" />

The judgments of the Lord are as a great deep.

Psalm 35<comment-streams id="G8" />

I determine in nothing.

(Sextus Empiricus)<comment-streams id="G8" />

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Source

https://lazenby.tumblr.com/post/1599204509/a-catalog-of-montaignes-beam-inscriptions. This site gives the original Greek and Latin along with some more information about the sources. We use here the translations and the minimal citations as Montaingne gave them.