All the world knows me in my book, and my book in me.
Michel De MontaigneRead
There are truths on this side of the Pyrenees which are falsehoods on the other
Interpretation
Truth can be subjective based on perspective and context.
This quote by Michel De Montaigne suggests that what is considered true can vary significantly depending on one's viewpoint or geographical location. It highlights the relativity of truth and invites us to reflect on our own beliefs and the influences that shape them, particularly in different cultures or environments, implying that understanding and open-mindedness are crucial in a diverse world.
In practice
In a discussion about cultural differences in beliefs.
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.
Nothing can be sadder or more profound than to see a thousand things for the first and last time.
I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the 'Yale News.'—and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the 'well-rounded man.' This isn’t just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.
It is not humiliating to be unhappy. Physical suffering is sometimes humiliating, but the suffering of being cannot be, it is life.
I ask the fundamental question of rationality: Why do you believe what you believe? What do you think you know and how do you think you know it?
Programs, systems and methods sit well in the ivory towers of monasteries or in the wooden arms of icons. Head knowledge comes from the pages of a theology text. But the invitation to know God - truly know Him - is always an invitation to suffer. Not to suffer alone, but to suffer with Him.
It can be lost, and it will be, if the time ever comes when these documents are regarded not as the supreme expression of our profound belief, but merely as curiosities in glass cases.
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