Montaigne - it's a long shot...

[JaneHH]

Anyone else do Montaigne at school/uni? It's a long shot but I'm desperate . Someone at work has used some pukeworthy "it's not the destination but the getting there" (translated into Dutch) quote in a presentation and attributed it to Montaigne. I'm thinking NO NO NO this is not Montaigne (one of my "special authors" at uni, but we're talking more than 10 years ago now...) and a search online hasn't produced anything equivalent by him.

So the question is: can I tell this business bllshit fckwit that he's got his quotes wrong and should check his sources HA! or can someone tell me I'm wrong and that Montaigne DID write something equivalent...?

Thanks... in the hope that I can actually USE my degree at work for once

bumpe

Sorry, don't know, but hope you are right so you can tell him he's talking shoite!

i'm afraid the only thing i know about Montaigne was that he liked the sensation of falling asleep - me and a million others, lol!

Oh God, I did study Montaigne at uni, but have absolutely no idea if he said this, or anything like this. In my defence, it was the first year.

Yes, he did have some great one-liners lol. In fact his books are on that great list of mine of "classic books to (re)read when I've got time" Never got through all of them at uni -and probably never will, ever- but it's nice to have a goal in life lol

lol chica I'd had trouble even telling you what I did in first year!

I only read the notes on 'Paradise Lost'. How the hell do you get through that, eh?

Disclaimer : I did plow through the anglo-saxon course !

(what were they called btw nicky? Microsoft doesn't go that far back in time )

I can't remember!

Perhaps like all traumatic events, I have supressed it, lol! We are talking 1992-93 you know.

Anyway you know what I mean. That's the beauty of MN, eh.

So who DOES know something about Montaigne then?

bumpe-di-bumpe, personne?

All I know about Montaigne is "because it was he; because it was I" which is kind of super-purely beautiful (as intended). Oh, and that he had a gracious circular library study

I must say, the ploddy mot you quoted seemed a bit more like it could have been got from T S Eliot (as in "not fare well, but fare forward, voyagers" - [crude misquoty paraphrase alert])

I'll have a bit more of a think.

Montaigne said a lot of interesting things but I do not recall the one you are thinking of either JaneHH

Having a trawl around has reminded me of what a wise and droll person he was. I most certainly did not appreciate him 25 years ago which is when I last looked at the Essais

Could this twit possibly have taken the line about "No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port" and scrambled it hopelessly?

Actually, if your colleague wants a reverse perspective and to genuinely amuse his audience, he should use this instead
The C17 had Montaigne, we have Barbara Cook!

There's this Paul Theroux one: "The journey, not the arrival, matters; the voyage, not the landing."

It seems to get attributed to TS Eliot (which is how I found it - following up earlier thought - but without any convincing Eliotic provenance) too. But I don't think it's Eliot, despite its being quite an Elioty sentiment. I think he wouldn't let himself actually say something quite so trite.

Sounds likely? You could put a note saying "Aren't you sure this comes from The Old Patagonian Express?"

That was meant to say "Are you sure this doesn't come from ..."

and thanks to everyone for your replies - had to go off and do other less important stuff yesterday...

Yes, his library is amazing (we went to see it while on holiday once) with all the inscriptions on the ceiling. Amazing to look up and actually see them having read so much about them and then forgotten all about them - and then, hey loooook!!!!

"The journey, not the arrival, matters" is EXACTLY the quote used (but then translated into Dutch). HA. So I've been proved right. Thank you, wise MN'ers. I love every chance to put down business bllshit fckwits who abuse anything cultural in an attempt to look intelligent. However I'm now considering how to do this without making myself look like an idiot (is very important business bllshit fckwit)

So in a weak attempt to seize the opportunity to keep talking about Montaigne , what's your favourite quote of his?

Oh in my mature years it has to be "the perfect marriage is between a deaf man and a blind woman", the old cynic

Although his views on children's games are of course much more enlightened:

It should be noted that the games of children are not games, and must be considered as their most serious actions.

Jane - there is a lot on the web which seems to completely insist "journey-not-arrival" soundbite is TS Eliot (so that the Paul Theroux use is a lift) - the most convincing is that Leonard Woolf seems to have used it as a title for one of his vols of memoirs (obviously well before PT was thought of). So I retract the bit about the Patagonian Express, but suggest you ask your colleague quite where he got the truism quotation.

It is so ALL over the web as a quotation (without any source given grr grr) that it rivals the awful journalistic trotting-out of "April is the cruellest month" - I used to know someone who kept a scrapbook of random facile appearances of quite monstrous inappropriateness (Women's Wear Weekly, that sort of thing).

Right - when I was looking for what Montaigne did say, I came across this nice one: "Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens."

Marina, yes I agree with you on that one about marriage (plus ça change, etc). Harsh but true! I'm afraid here at work I can't open YouTube so will have to save your previous link for when I'm at home, but in any case thanks for that

And Bink, yes, in an effort to avoid having to write a rather tedious document here at work I did a bit of googling earlier. I also came to the conclusion that it was a TS Eliot soundbite (as you originally thought) and that Paul Theroux had nabbed it. The Leonard Woolf usage made me also date it to TS Eliot. (Don't our great minds think alike, eh? ) I too found the quotation all over the place without sources... Well, at least Google is consistent in its search results...

If you ever get back in touch with that person with the scrapbook that'll be a thread to last a lifetime. Please post!!

I can tell you exactly where the colleague got his quotation: ONE website on t' interweb: www.inmensis.com/pages/downloadmap/quotes_leiderschap.doc
Gives quotes (in Dutch) about leadership . The fact that it was nowhere else to be found made me suspicious...

Don't you just HATE it when business colleagues who never ever read a book (and probably never have) start spouting stuff to sound all big and clever...

But the worm/god quote is rather good. I like the apposition of earthly/heavenly. (See, that nostalgia is bringing all that essay speak back )

I quite liked all his "noble savage" and relativism stuff while at uni. This one could be a Mumsnet slogan:

"Chacun appelle barbarie ce qui n'est pas de son usage"

Oh, snap JaneHH. I saw that very quote and thought it should be applied liberally on this site

Calling MN Towers, we have an idea for a new MN slogan