Little Tricks for Getting By Well

How To Live

"Don't Worry About Death
Pay Attention
Be Born
Read at lot, forget most of what you read, and be slow-witted
Survive love and loss
Use little tricks
Question Everything
Keep a private room behind the shop
Be convivial: live with others
Wake from the sleep of habit
Live temperately
Guard your humanity
Do something no one has done before
See the world
Do a good job, but not too good a job
Philosophize only by accident
Reflect on everything; regret nothing
Give up control
Be ordinary and imperfect
Let life be its own answer"

-  Summary of some of the views of Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) by Sarah Bakewell in How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer, 2010.    

How to Live a Good Life: Advice from Wise Persons

Green Way Research

A Philosopher's Notebooks by Mike Garofalo


Currently, I am reading the excellent biography of Michel de Montaigne by Sarah Blackwell.  I first read Montaigne back in 1964.  Now, in 2015, in my own semi-retirement, I find rereading Montaigne's reflections in his "retirement" on his own life, times, experiences, thoughts, and feelings to be intellectually stimulating.  Intellectual history and biographies are some of my main reading interests.  


The Essays by Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)  Translated by Donald M. Frame.  New York, Everyman's Library, 2003.  I own the complete works by Montaigne in a Kindle digital version for easier reading.  1392 pages.  ISBN: 1400040213.  VSCL.

How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer  By Sarah Bakewell.  New York, Other Press, 2010.  Index, bibliography, notes, 399 pages.  ISBN: 9781590514832.  VSCL.