It is an absolute perfection and virtually divine to know how to enjoy our being rightfully. We seek other conditions because we do not understand the use of our own, and go outside of ourselves because we do not know what it is like inside. Yet there is no use our mounting on stilts, for on stilts we must still walk on our own legs. And on the loftiest throne in the world we are still sitting only on our own rump.

— Montaigne

PREDICT THE WEATHER. Don’t tell anyone, don’t share predictions or spread rumors. Don’t take pride in correct guesses. Keep track, logs. Ignore forecasts, percentages, possibilities. Amass records, case histories. Avoid the impulse to diagnose. Organize the data into charts, graphs, lists. Put in alphabetical order, then numerical – small to large, reverse. Randomize. Study time tables, ebbs and flows, the phases of the moon. Repeat everything you’ve learned and watched and kept track of until it comes as second nature, like multiplication tables in grade school. Repeat again, then forget it all, purge. Watch the sky. Think of nothing. Close your eyes. What do you see?

— Aaron Burch

It goes on and hurries to some end,
just circling and turning without a goal.
Flashes of red, of green, of grey whirl past,
solid shapes barely glimpsed.

Sometimes a smile comes toward us,
and, like a blessing, shines and is gone
in this dizzying parade with no destination.

— Rilke, New Poems

Against time and the damages of the brain
Sharpen and calibrate. Not yet in full,
Yet in some arbitrated part
Order the facade of the listless summer.

Spies, moving delicately among the enemy,
The younger sons, the fools,
Set somewhat aside the dialects and the stained skins of
feigned madness,
Ambiguously signal, baffle, the eluded sentinel.

Edgar, weeping for pity, to the shelf of that sick bluff,
Bring your blind father, and describe a little;
Behold him, part wakened, fallen among field flowers shallow
But undisclosed, withdraw.

Not yet that naked hour when armed,
Disguise flung flat, squarely we challenge the fiend.
Still, comrade, the running of beasts and the ruining heaven
Still captive the old wild king.

— James Agee

Hmm.

Whoever degrades another degrades me,
And whatever is done or said returns at last to me . . .
I speak the pass-word primeval, I give the sign of democracy,
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their
….counterpart of on the same terms. . . .

For the great Idea, the idea of perfect and free individuals,
For that, the bard walks in advance, leader of leaders,
The attitude of him cheers up slaves and horrified foreign despots . . .

Without extinction is Liberty, without retrograde is Equality,
They live in the feelings of . . . men and . . . women.

— Walt Whitman, from Song of Myself and Beyond Blue Ontario’s Shore

I have a friend
At the end
Of the world.
His name is a breath

Of fresh air.
He is dressed in
Grey chiffon. At least
I think it is chiffon.
It has a
Peculiar look, like smoke.

It wraps him round
It blows out of place
It conceals him
I have not seen his face.

But I have seen his eyes, they are
As pretty and bright
As raindrops on black twigs
In March, and heard him say:

I am a breath
Of fresh air for you, a change
By and by.

Black March I call him
Because of his eyes
Being like March raindrops
On black twigs.

(Such a pretty time when the sky
Behind black twigs can be seen
Stretched out in one
Uninterrupted
Cambridge blue as cold as snow.)

But this friend
Whatever new names I give him
Is an old friend. He says:

Whatever names you give me
I am
A breath of fresh air,
A change for you

— Stevie Smith

In the year of Christ 1571, at the age of thirty-eight, on the last day of February, anniversary of his birth, Michel de Montaigne, long weary of the servitude of the court and of public employments, while still entire, retired to the bosom of the learned Virgins, where in calm and freedom from all cares he will spend what little remains of his life now more than half run out. If the fates permit, he will complete this abode, this sweet ancestral retreat; and he has consecrated it to his freedom, tranquility, and leisure.

Between two seas the sea-bird’s wing makes halt
…Wind-weary; while with lifting head he waits
…For what may come of glory thro’ the gates
That open still toward sunrise on the vault
High-domed of morning, & in flight’s default
…With spreading sense of spirit anticipates
…What new sea now may lure beyond the straits
His wings exulting that her winds exult
And fill them full as sails to seaward spread
…Fulfilled with fair speed’s promise. Pass, my song,
Forth to the heaven of thy desire & dread,
…The presence of our lord, long loved & long
Far above beholden, who to thee
Was as light kindling all a windy sea.

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

If my mind could gain a firm footing, I would not make essays, I would make decisions; but it is always in apprenticeship and on trial.

— Montaigne

Lead, kindly fowl! They always did: ask the ages. What bird has done yesterday man may do next year, be it fly, be it moult, be it hatch, be it agreement in the nest.

— James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

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.

— Montaigne

. . . slide over this world a bit lightly and on the surface . . .

— Montaigne

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a damn fool about it.

— W. C. Fields