Quotation
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“To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquillity in our conduct.”
Michel de Montaigne · Renaissance humanism · Renaissance · 1588
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the sentence as a ranking of tasks: the essayist says the duty is to order a life, and that books and victories are the wrong prizes if they replace that ordering. It is partly a joke against his own huge book. A rival reading hears a retirement slogan, a withdrawal from public duty, but order in conduct includes how one deals with others, illness, and law, which the essay discusses in detail. The line is near the end of On Experience, the last and most sprawling of the Essays.
Did Michel de Montaigne really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. Screech's translation of On Experience, the last essay, book three, chapter 13. Montaigne is ranking the work of living above authorship and conquest. The French is his. This wording is a translation.
Where it comes from
Essays III.13
Approximate date: 1588.
How to use it
A person finishing a perfect spreadsheet for a community project in York, and snapping at everyone who lives with them, has won the wrong campaign on this ranking. The spreadsheet may still matter. It does not outrank the conduct; He is not licensing a chaotic life that calls itself authentic; Tranquillity here is ordered conduct, not the absence of tasks.
A mindset reading
The sentence is easy to turn against writing, by a writer who did not stop writing. The duty is the rank order, not a ban on books. Composing a character, in his sense, is work, closer to the old care of the self than to a mood of being fine as one is; A rival use treats tranquillity as numbness; The essay is full of pain, kidney stones included, and still talks about order.
Understand the philosophy
On Experience ends the book by trusting lived trial more than abstract systems, including systems of medicine and law. The key term is character, the composition of a life, set above the composition of books and the winning of provinces. Screech's English keeps the double contrast. The essay is where his scepticism becomes a practical art of living rather than only a doubt about doctrines.
- virtue
- self
- ethics
FAQ
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the sentence as a ranking of tasks: the essayist says the duty is to order a life, and that books and victories are the wrong prizes if they replace that ordering. It is partly a joke against his own huge book. A rival reading hears a retirement slogan, a withdrawal from public duty, but order in conduct includes how one deals with others, illness, and law, which the essay discusses in detail. The line is near the end of On Experience, the last and most sprawling of the Essays.
Did Michel de Montaigne really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. Screech's translation of On Experience, the last essay, book three, chapter 13. Montaigne is ranking the work of living above authorship and conquest. The French is his. This wording is a translation.
Which work is it in?
Essays III.13 Approximate date: 1588.