All the world knows me in my book, and my book in me.
Michel De MontaigneRead
The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them... Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.
Interpretation
Life's value is measured by how we utilize our time rather than its duration.
This quote by Michel De Montaigne emphasizes that the quality of our lives is determined by how we choose to spend our time instead of merely counting the years we have lived. It suggests that fulfillment and satisfaction come from our actions and decisions rather than simply living for a long time.
In practice
In a graduation speech, one might use this quote to inspire students to focus on making the most of their future.
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.
It is racist, and it was racist when it was created. The Indian Act controls, or seeks to control, the lives of all indigenous people in a way that you and I would never accept.
Hope is not a feeling of certainty that everything ends well. Hope is just a feeling that life and work have a meaning.
Just as divine authority was legitimised by religious mythologies and human authority was legitimised by humanist ideologies, so high-tech gurus and Silicon Valley prophets are creating a new universal narrative that legitimises the authority of algorithms and Big Data.
If alpha [the fine-structure constant] were bigger than it really is, we should not be able to distinguish matter from ether [the vacuum, nothingness], and our task to disentangle the natural laws would be hopelessly difficult. The fact however that alpha has just its value 1/137 is certainly no chance but itself a law of nature. It is clear that the explanation of this number must be the central problem of natural philosophy.
We must take the profit out of war.
Beauty is that quality which, next to money, is generally the most attractive to the worst kinds of men; and, therefore, it is likely to entail a great deal of trouble on the possessor.
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