Every man is well or badly off as he thinks himself to be. The man is content who believes himself to be content, not he whom the world believes to be so. And that belief alone makes it real and true.
Chascun est bien ou mal, selon qu'il s'en trouve. Non de qui on le croid, mais qui le croid de soy, est content: et en cella seul la creance se donne essence et verité.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
Pages
▼
Friday, December 16, 2005
The Secret of Happiness
Montaigne, Essays 1.40 (tr. E.J. Trechmann):