>Those two forms of converse [friendships and loving relationships]

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>Those two forms of converse [friendships and loving relationships] depend on chance and on other people. The first is distressingly rare, the second withers with age, so they could not have adequately provided for the needs of my life. Converse with books (which is my third form) is more reliable and more properly our own. Other superior endowments it concedes to the first two: its own share consists in being constantly and easily available with its services. This converse is ever at my side throughout my life’s course and is everywhere present. It consoles me in my old age and in my retreat; it relieves me of the weight of distressing idleness and, at any time, can rid me of boring company. It blunts the stab of pain whenever the pain is not too masterful and extreme. To distract me from morose thought I simply need to have recourse to books; they can easily divert me to them and rob me of those thoughts. And yet there is no mutiny when they see that I only seek them for want of other benefits which are more real, more alive, more natural; they always welcome me with the same expression.

>"No need to pity an invalid who has a remedy up his coat-sleeve!" All the profit which I draw from books consists in experiencing and applying that proverb. In practice I hardly use them more than those who are quite unacquainted with them. I enjoy them as misers do riches: because I know I can always enjoy them whenever I please. My soul is satisfied and contented by this right of possession. It is the best protection which I have found for our human journey and I deeply pity men of intelligence who lack it. I on the other hand can accept any sort of pastime, no matter how trifling, because I have this one which will never fail me.

>If anyone says to me that to use the Muses as mere playthings and pastimes is to debase them, then he does not know as I do the value of pleasure, plaything, or pastime. I could almost say that any other end is laughable. I live from day to day; and, saving your reverence, I live only for myself. My plans stop there. In youth I studied in order to show off; later, a little, to make myself wiser; now I do it for amusement, never for profit. A silly spendthrift humour that once I had for furnishing myself with books, not to provide for my needs but three paces beyond that, so as to paper my walls with them as decorations, I gave up long ago.

>Books have plenty of pleasant qualities for those who know how to select them. But there is no good without ill. The pleasure we take in them is no purer or untarnished than any other. Reading has its disadvantages – and they are weighty ones: it exercises the soul, but during that time the body (my care for which I have not forgotten) remains inactive and grows earth-bound and sad. I know of no excess more harmful to me in my declining years, nor more to be avoided.

Montaigne is the coolest person ever to have lived.