David > Recent Status Updates

“Finally, through all its veils I have uncovered the awful truth ... Silvio, I am in love with ... Oh no, I shall never be able to say it ... I am in love with a man!”

- Chevalier d’Albert, captivated with the same man as his mistress

"Here he broke down completely. Happily, he said, recovering slightly, there were no witnesses. She was, after all, only a woman."

"In the current socio-political climate, he said to himself, committing suicide is absurd and redundant. Better to become an undercover poet."

"Books are for my mind one of the kinds of occupations which entice it away from its study."
("Of three kinds of association")

Do books truly prevent Montaigne from understanding himself?
Or -- do they hinder his self-understanding because books provide enlightenment in terms constructed by other individuals?

"Thus the world is filled with twaddle and lies. The reason why we doubt hardly anything is that we never test our common impressions."

"The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself."

"Der Kaffeegeruch beherrschte jetzt alles."
(The scent of coffee now permeated everything.)

"The popular has always been attracted by the military and by military brutality. It is a species of perversion which is particularly rife in Alpine regions, where brainlessness has always passed for entertainment, even for art."

"... and ultimately the supreme mathematical art, which can be called reading only when we have mastered it completely ..."