HKB
1 passages · search this phrase →
Often appears with: will, choice, and freedom · self-knowledge · reason and the intellect · present vs future · mind anxious about the future · logic, method, and demonstration
Usually: argument (1) · detachment (1) · exhortation (1)
“We are never present with, but always beyond ourselves: fear, desire, hope, still push us on towards the future, depriving us, in the meantime, of the sense and consideration of that which is to amuse us with the thought of what shall be, even when we shall be no more.” Michel de Montaigne, Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Volume 02 · insight
In a new essay section, Montaigne claims human beings are never truly present because fear and desire push them toward the future, and he recommends self-knowledge and doing one’s proper work rather than chasing what comes later.
THAT OUR AFFECTIONS CARRY THEMSELVES BEYOND US. Such as accuse mankind of the folly of gaping after future things, and advise us to make our benefit of those which are present, and to set up our rest upon them, as having no grasp upon that which is to come, even less than that which we have upon what is past, have hit upon the most universal of human errors, if that may be called an error to which nature herself has…