All the world knows me in my book, and my book in me.
Michel De MontaigneRead
One open way of speaking introduces another open way of speaking, and draws out discoveries, like wine and love.
Interpretation
Open communication fosters deeper connections and insights, similar to the effects of wine and love.
In this quote, Montaigne emphasizes the importance of open and honest dialogue. He suggests that when one person speaks openly, it encourages others to do the same, leading to meaningful discoveries and connections, much like how wine and love can enhance experiences and relationships. This reflects the transformative power of communication in human interactions.
In practice
In a team meeting, to encourage participation, one might say, 'As Montaigne said, one open way of speaking introduces another, so let's share our thoughts freely.'
All the world knows me in my book, and my book in me.
All I say is by way of discourse, and nothing by way of advice. I should not speak so boldly if it were my due to be believed.
Pythagoras used to say that life resembles the Olympic Games: a few people strain their muscles to carry off a prize; others bring trinkets to sell to the crowd for gain; and some there are, and not the worst, who seek no other profit than to look at the show and see how and why everything is done; spectators of the life of other people in order to judge and regulate their own.
There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.
Those who have compared our life to a dream were right... we were sleeping wake, and waking sleep.
Such as are in immediate fear of a losing their estates, of banishment, or of slavery, live in perpetual anguish, and lose all appetite and repose; whereas such as are actually poor, slaves, or exiles, ofttimes live as merrily as other folk.
The English language started out as a distortion in my life, but nothing remains the same, and so the distortion is now just normal. That is one of the things that will happen to all distortions: They become normal and turn into something else.
Forget about enlightenment. Sit down wherever you are and listen to the wind that is singing in your veins. Feel the love, the longing and the fear in your bones. Open your heart to who you are, right now, not who you would like to be. Not the saint you're striving to become. But the being right here before you, inside you, around you. All of you is holy. You're already more and less than whatever you can know. Breathe out, look in, let go.
We must therefore rediscover, after the natural world, the social world, not as an object or sum of objects, but as a permanent field or dimension of existence.
Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.
I don't have to see a murder in order to condemn murder.
On the one hand, faith is a profoundly personal contact with God, which touches me in my innermost being and places me in front of the living God in absolute immediacy in such a way that I can speak with Him, love Him, and enter into communion with Him.
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