“ the soul is there continually employed in observing new and unknown things, and I do not know, as I have often said a better school wherein to model life than by incessantly exposing to it the diversity of so many other lives, fancies, and usances, and by making it relish a perpetual variety of forms of human nature. The body is, therein, neither idle nor overwrought ”
Michel de Montaigne, The Essays of Michel de Montaigne (1580). copy citation
Author | Michel de Montaigne |
---|---|
Source | The Essays of Michel de Montaigne |
Topic | diversity school |
Date | 1580 |
Language | English |
Reference | |
Note | Translated by Charles Cotton |
Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600-h/3600-h.htm |
Context
“of the second, there are others that I could find out in the same person: many of these rare examples surpass the force of my action, but some of them, moreover, surpass the force of my judgment.
Besides these reasons, travel is in my opinion a very profitable exercise; the soul is there continually employed in observing new and unknown things, and I do not know, as I have often said a better school wherein to model life than by incessantly exposing to it the diversity of so many other lives, fancies, and usances, and by making it relish a perpetual variety of forms of human nature. The body is, therein, neither idle nor overwrought; and that moderate agitation puts it in breath. I can keep on horseback, tormented with the stone as I am, without alighting or being weary, eight or ten hours together:
“Vires ultra sorternque senectae.””
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