The Consolations of Philosophy

by Alain de Botton

French travellers were prone to be very upset by the differences. In hotels, they kept away from sideboards with strange foods, requesting the normal dishes they knew from home. They tried not to talk to anyone who had made the error of not speaking their language, and picked gingerly at the fennel bread.

French tourists: acting like spoiled brats since 1580 - Michel de Montaigne

If scholars paid such attention to the classics, it was, suggested Montaigne, from a vainglorious wish to be thought intelligent through association with prestigious names.

true dat

‘After his fortieth year,’ he consoles himself, ‘any man of merit… will hardly be free from a certain touch of misanthropy.’

Love could not induce us to take on the burden of propagating the species with out promising us the greatest happiness we could imagine. To be shocked at how deeply rejection hurts is to ignore what acceptance involves.

We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.