All the world knows me in my book, and my book in me.
Michel De MontaigneRead
In my opinion, the most fruitful and natural play of the mind is conversation. I find it sweeter than any other action in life; and if I were forced to choose, I think I would rather lose my sight than my hearing and voice. The study of books is a drowsy and feeble exercise which does not warm you up.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Conversation is a vital and enriching part of life, more valuable than reading.
In this quote, Michel De Montaigne expresses the importance of conversation as an essential and lively form of mental engagement. He suggests that the richness of human interaction through dialogue surpasses other activities, like reading, which he views as a less dynamic form of learning and connection.
Themes
ConversationDialogueMindInteractionLearning
In practice
Example use cases
During a team-building retreat, we discussed the importance of open conversation in fostering collaboration.
More from Michel De Montaigne
All quotes →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.
Michel De MontaigneRead
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.
Michel De MontaigneRead
There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.
Michel De MontaigneRead
Those who have compared our life to a dream were right... we were sleeping wake, and waking sleep.
Michel De MontaigneRead
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.
Michel De MontaigneRead
Similar quotes
Among the facts of the universe to be accounted for, it may be said, is Mind; and it is self evident that nothing can have produced Mind but Mind.
John Stuart MillRead
Again: there is nothing inherently superior about resistance. All our claims for the righteousness of resistance rest on the rightness of the claim that the resisters are acting in the name of justice. And the justice of the cause does not depend on, and is not enhanced by, the virtue of those who make the assertion. It depends first and last on the truth of a description of a state of affairs that is, truly, unjust and unnecessary.
Susan SontagRead
Only literature could reveal the process of breaking the law - without which the law would have no end - independently of the necessity to create order.
Georges BatailleRead
When you are eighty years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices.
Jeff BezosRead
I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.
George Bernard ShawRead
God made a beauteous garden With lovely flowers strown, But one straight, narrow pathway That was not overgrown. And to this beauteous garden He brought mankind to live, And said "To you, my children, These lovely flowers I give. Prune ye my vines and fig trees, With care my flowers tend, But keep the pathway open Your home is at the end." God's Garden
Robert FrostRead