All the world knows me in my book, and my book in me.
Michel De MontaigneRead
Virtue rejects facility to be her companion. She requires a craggy, rough and thorny way.
Interpretation
True virtue demands effort and perseverance, not ease and comfort.
This quote by Michel De Montaigne highlights that genuine virtue and moral integrity do not come easily. Instead, they require a challenging journey filled with obstacles and hardships, suggesting that quickly gained or effortless qualities may not be truly virtuous.
In practice
This quote can be used in a motivational seminar discussing the importance of hard work in achieving one's goals.
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.
Arrogance and fanaticism cause the hardening of positions taken and entrenchment can only lead to a dead end.
It is also a natural thing for a serious young man that he should form for himself as precise an idea as possible of the goal of his desires.
Let us dare to read, think, speak and write.
You can be helping many people, but if you are not helping yourself, you have missed the one person you were born to heal.
Whatever you would make habitual, practice it; and if you would not make a thing habitual, do not practice it, but accustom yourself to something else.
Of all the things a man may do, sleep probably contributes most to keeping him sane. It puts brackets about each day. If you do something foolish or painful today, you get irritated if somebody mentions it, today. If it happened yesterday, though, you can nod or chuckle, as the case may be. You've crossed through nothingness or dream to another island in Time.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.