“After four centuries, Montaigne's curious genius still has that effect on his readers and, time and again, one finds in his self-portrait one's own most brilliant aperçus (the ones that somehow we forgot to write down and so forgot) restored to us in his essays—attempts—to assay—value—himself in his own time as well as, if he was on the subject, all time, if there is such a thing.”

— Gore Vidal

"Montaigne"
1990s, United States - Essays 1952-1992 (1992)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Gore Vidal 163

American writer 1925–2012

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“Finding his mind so filled with “chimeras and fantastic monsters, one after another, without order or purpose,” he [Montaigne] decided to write them down, not directly to overcome them, but to inspect their strangeness at his leisure. So he picked up his pen; the first of the Essays was born.”

Sarah Bakewell book How to Live

Source: How to Live, or, A Life of Montaigne in one Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer (2010), p. 31.

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Robert A. Heinlein book Beyond This Horizon

Source: Beyond This Horizon (1948; originally serialized in 1942), Chapter 14, “—and beat him when he sneezes”, p. 131

“But when He of His special grace will shew Himself here, He strengtheneth the creature above its self, and He measureth the Shewing, after His own will, as it is profitable for the time.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Fourteenth Revelation, Chapter 43
Context: Then shall we see God face to face, homely and fully. The creature that is made shall see and endlessly behold God which is the Maker. For thus may no man see God and live after, that is to say, in this deadly life. But when He of His special grace will shew Himself here, He strengtheneth the creature above its self, and He measureth the Shewing, after His own will, as it is profitable for the time.

“He who has done his best for his own time has lived for all times.”

Friedrich Schiller Wallenstein

Prologue
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“The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

“Man wants to own his existence. But no one owns time.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The Time Keeper

“When a man takes an oath, Meg, he's holding his own self in his own hands. Like water. And if he opens his fingers then — he needn't hope to find himself again.”

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Sir Thomas More, Act II
A Man for All Seasons (1960)

“Through failures one becomes intelligent; but the one who has trained himself in this subject so that he can make others wise through their own failures, has used his intelligence. Ignorance is not stupidity.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Kant, Immanuel (1996), page 100
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“A man of genuine literary genius, since he possesses a temperament whose susceptibilities are of wider area than those of any other, is inevitably of all people the one most variously affected by his surroundings. And it is he, in consequence, who of all people most faithfully and compactly exhibits the impress of his times and his times' tendencies, not merely in his writings — where it conceivably might be just predetermined affectation — but in his personality.”

James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) American author

"Auctorial Induction"
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“I am still the Hitler of the time. This Hitler has only one objective, justice for his own people, sovereignty for his people, recognition of the independence of his people, and their right to their resources. If that is Hitler, then let me be a Hitler tenfold. Ten times, that is what we stand for.”

Robert Mugabe (1924–2019) former President of Zimbabwe

Speech at the state funeral of a Cabinet minister, March 2003. Quoted in ['Hitler' Mugabe launches revenge terror attacks, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/zimbabwe/1425727/Hitler-Mugabe-launches-revenge-terror-attacks.html, Peta, Thornycroft, Daily Telegraph, London, 26 March 2003, 5 August 2013]
2000s, 2000-2004

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