“ Difficulty is a coin the learned make use of, like jugglers, to conceal the vanity of their art, and which human sottishness easily takes for current pay. ”
Michel de Montaigne, The Essays of Michel de Montaigne (1580). copy citation
| Author | Michel de Montaigne |
|---|---|
| Source | The Essays of Michel de Montaigne |
| Topic | difficulty vanity |
| Date | 1580 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | Translated by Charles Cotton |
| Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600-h/3600-h.htm |
Context
“Clitomachus affirmed “That he could never discover by Carneades’s writings what opinion he was of.” This was it that made Epicurus affect to be abstruse, and that procured Heraclitus the epithet of [—Greek—] Difficulty is a coin the learned make use of, like jugglers, to conceal the vanity of their art, and which human sottishness easily takes for current pay.
Claras, ob obscuram linguam, magis inter manes... Omnia enim stolidi magis admirantur amantque Inversis qu sub verbis latitantia cemunt. “Bombast and riddle best do puppies please, For fools admire and love such things as these;”
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