How to Live Quotes

“I set forth a humble and inglorious life; that does not matter. You can tie up all moral philosophy with a common and private life just as well as with a life of richer stuff.”
― Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

“Virgil: “It gathers force as it proceeds.”
― Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

“Flaubert told his friends, “Read Montaigne … He will calm you.” But, as he also added: “Read him in order to live.”
― Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

“defenseless as a fly, helpless as a snail,”
― Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

“besides, it was “putting a very high price on one’s conjectures” to have someone roasted alive on their account.”
― Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

“Nietzsche wrote of certain “free-spirited people” who are perfectly satisfied “with a minor position or a fortune that just meets their needs; for they will set themselves up to live in such a way that a great change in economic conditions, even a revolution in political structures, will not overturn their life with”
― Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

“One gets used to it, said Socrates, as those who live close to a mill do to the sound of the water-wheel turning.”
― Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

“Alcibiades asked him how he stood the nagging.”
― Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

“Or perhaps she is fantasizing about someone else: “What if she eats your bread with the sauce of a more agreeable imagination?”
― Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

“Seneca did this too: “Place before your mind’s eye the vast spread of time’s abyss, and consider the universe; and then contrast our so-called human life with infinity.”
― Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

“a gang of killers confessed to a murder for which someone had already been tried and was about to be executed. Surely this ought to mean a stay of execution? No, decided the court: that would set a dangerous precedent for overturning judgments.”
― Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

“She will do this job perfectly for you;”
― Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

“Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately.”
― Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

“To philosophize is to learn how to die.”
― Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

“And it now seemed to him that the only people who regularly died as bravely as philosophers should were those who knew no philosophy at all: the uneducated peasants in his local estates and villages.”
― Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

“In dying, he now realized, you do not encounter death at all, for you are gone before it gets there. You die in the same way that you fall asleep: by drifting away.”
― Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

“For Montaigne, this old trick (he borrowed it from the ancient Epicureans) was more than just a therapeutic tool. It was the very foundation of philosophical wisdom. By expecting too much of ourselves, he thought, and trying to remain in control of every experience, we actually undermine that control. We lose contact with our nature, and thus we lose our ability to understand or judge situations correctly. This makes us foolish as well as miserable.”
― Sarah Bakewell, Montaigne, Philosopher of Life: How to Believe

“Thus, if we have spent our lives preparing to meet death like an enemy on a battlefield, we have been wasting our time. As Montaigne now put it, with a superb flourish of nonchalance, "Don't bother your head about it". This easy slide into acceptance became Montaigne's favourite ploy for dealing with other discomforts and concerns, too.”
― Sarah Bakewell, Montaigne, Philosopher of Life: How to Believe

“In his twenties, Montaigne suffered this morbid obsession because he had spent too much time reading classical philosophers. Death was a topic of which the ancients never tired.”
― Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

“He can say surprising things: a lot has changed since Montaigne was born, almost half a millennium ago, and neither manners nor beliefs are always still recognizable. Yet to read Montaigne is to experience a series of shocks of familiarity, which make the centuries between him and the twenty-first-century reader collapse to nothing.”
― Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

“He tells us, for no particular reason, that the only fruit he likes is melon, that he prefers to have sex lying down rather than standing up, that he cannot sing, and that he loves vivacious company and often gets carried away by the spark of repartee. But he also describes sensations that are harder to capture in words, or even to be aware of: what it feels like to be lazy, or courageous, or indecisive; or to indulge a moment of vanity, or to try to shake off an obsessive fear. He even writes about the sheer feeling of being alive.”
― Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

“But there were smaller puzzles, too. How do you avoid getting drawn into a pointless argument with your wife, or a servant? How can you reassure a friend who thinks a witch has cast a spell on him? How do you cheer up a weeping neighbor? How do you guard your home? What is the best strategy if you are held up by armed robbers who seem to be uncertain whether to kill you or hold you to ransom? If you overhear your daughter’s governess teaching her something you think is wrong, is it wise to intervene? How do you deal with a bully? What do you say to your dog when he wants to go out and play, while you want to stay at your desk writing your book?”
― Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

“A down-to-earth question, “How to live?” splintered into a myriad other pragmatic questions. Like everyone else, Montaigne ran up against the major perplexities of existence: how to cope with the fear of death, how to get over losing a child or a beloved friend, how to reconcile yourself to failures, how to make the most of every moment so that life does not drain away unappreciated.”
― Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

“He weathered the disorder, oversaw his estate, assessed court cases as a magistrate, and administered Bordeaux as the most easygoing mayor in its history. All the time, he wrote exploratory, free-floating pieces to which he gave simple titles:”
― Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

“it was one of the many petty weaknesses Montaigne cheerfully acknowledged, adding: If others examined themselves attentively, as I do, they would find themselves, as I do, full of inanity and nonsense. Get rid of it I cannot without getting rid of myself. We are all steeped in it, one as much as another; but those who are aware of it are a little better off—though I don’t know.”
― Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

“Zweig’s generation – he was born in 1881 – assumed that prosperity and personal freedom would just keep growing. Why should things go backwards? No one felt that civilisation was in danger; no one had to retreat into their private selves to preserve their spiritual freedom.”
― Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer

“It stimulated him as grit stimulates an oyster.”
― Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer

“Montaigne also had an audience with the current octogenarian Pope, Gregory XIII. The secretary described the ritual in detail. First Montaigne and one of his young traveling companions entered the room where the Pope was seated, and knelt to receive a benediction. They sidled along the wall, then cut across towards him; halfway there, they stopped for another benediction. Then they knelt on a velvet carpet at the Pope’s feet, beside the French ambassador, who was presenting them. The ambassador knelt too, and pulled back the Pope’s robe to expose his right foot, shod in a red slipper with a white cross. The visitors each bent towards this foot and kissed it; Montaigne noted that the Pope lifted his toes a little to make the kiss easier. After this almost erotic performance, the ambassador covered the papal foot again, and rose to deliver a speech about the visitors.”
― Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

“Contemporary demonologist Jean Bodin argued that, in crisis conditions such as these, standards of evidence must be lowered. Witchcraft was so serious, and so hard to detect using normal methods of proof, that society could not afford to adhere too much to “legal tidiness and normal procedures.” Public rumor could be considered “almost infallible”: if everyone in a village said that a particular woman was a witch, that was sufficient to justify putting her to the torture. Medieval techniques were revived specifically for such cases, including “swimming” suspects to see if they floated, and searing them with red-hot irons. The numbers of convicted witches kept rising as standards of evidence went down, and the increase amounted to further proof that the crisis was real and that further adjustment of the law was necessary. As history has repeatedly suggested, nothing is more effective for demolishing traditional legal protections than the combined claims that a crime is uniquely dangerous, and that those behind it have exceptional powers of resistance. It was all accepted with hardly a murmur, except by a few writers such as Montaigne, who pointed out that torture was useless for getting at the truth since people will say anything to stop the pain—and that, besides, it was “putting a very high price on one’s conjectures” to have someone roasted alive on their account.”
― Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

“Montaigne’s half-century was so disastrous for France that it took another half-century to recover from it—and in some ways recovery never came, for the turmoil of the late 1500s stopped France from building a major New World empire like those of England and Spain, and kept it inward-looking.”
― Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer