Let's talk about the French

Of the sixteenth century. If Cicero wasn't the father of the essay than Montaigne surely was. So, yeah, I've culled a few hundred pages worth of his writing to give you the pithy stuff, and he's been dead for a few hundred years and can no longer advocate for himself, so it's left to me, and you, to bring him back into being. As I've said before, the interesting thing about reading Montaigne is the similarity you see in the ills of the world and the condition of humanity, in general. Which is to say, things change, but man, other than life span, (yay for us!), seems to struggle with the same things. I watched Life in a Day this evening, which is also a good documentary type way of reminding yourself that the human condition is incredibly disparate on this planet and is also simultaneously familiar to us all. Anyhow, I'd recommend it. However, first read sixteenth century french essayists because it gives you more street cred.

From his essay called "Of Vanity"

Among human human characteristics, this one is rather common: to be better pleased with other people's things than with our own, and to love movement and change.

Everyday annoyances are never slight. They are continual and irreparable, especially when they arise from details of household management, which are continual and unavoidable.

For as regards my own personal inclination, neither the pleasure of building, which is said to be so alluring, nor hunting, nor gardens, nor the other pleasures of a retired life, are capable of amusing me very much. That is a thing for which I am annoyed with myself...

In the eighteen years that I have been managing an estate, I have not succeeded in prevailing with myself to examine a title deed or my principal affairs, which necessarily have to pass within my knowledge and attention. This is not a philosophical scorn for transitory and mundane things; my taste is not so refined, and I value them at least at their worth; but it certainly is inexcusable and childish laziness and negligence. What would I not do rather than read a contract...Nothing costs me so dear as care and trouble, and I only seek to grow indifferent and relaxed.

"...a little natural pride, inability to endure refusal, limitation of desires and plans, incapacity for any kind of business, and my very favorite qualities, idleness and freedom."

Brand-new acquaintances that are wholly of my own choice seem to me to be well worth those other common chance acquaintances of our neighborhood. Friendships purely of our own acquisition usually surpass those to which community or climate bond us.

Besides these reasons, travel seems to me a profitable exercise. The mind is continually exercised observing new and unknown things; and I know of no better school, as I have often said, for forming one's life, than to set before it constantly the diversity of so many other lives, ideas, and customs, and to make it taste such a perpetual variety of forms of our nature.