Elevated Thoughts

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Montaigne_1576_R.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

The joists in the tower in which Montaigne wrote his Essays are inscribed with his favorite quotations from Greek and Latin authors, many of which appear in his writings: “It is not so much things that torment man, as the opinions he has of things.” “Every reasoning has its contrary.” “Wind swells bladders, opinion swells men.”

He wrote, “The room pleases me because it is somewhat difficult of access, and retired, as much on account of the utility of the exercise, as because I there avoid the crowd. Here is my seat, my place, my rest. I try to make it purely my own, and to free this single corner from conjugal, filial, and civil community.”

The numbers in the diagram below correspond to this table in the German Wikipedia. English translations are here.

In large Latin letters on the central rafter are the words “I DO NOT UNDERSTAND. I PAUSE. I EXAMINE.”

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ch%C3%A2teau_de_Montaigne_-_tower_-_sketch_of_2nd_floor_with_library.svg
Image: © Roman Eisele / CC BY-SA 4.0
| Literature · Quotations

Adages

Aphorisms from Norman Macdonald’s Maxims and Moral Reflections, 1827:

  • By speaking contemptibly of our enemies, we disgrace our own hostility.
  • We would be successful in most enterprises of life, were we to take that advice to ourselves which we give to others in similar circumstances.
  • Severity of punishment deters minor crimes, but renders greater ones more certain and determined.
  • Pride, like love, is sure to discover itself; because it can only derive value from the success with which it affects others.
  • Were there no fools there would be no flatterers.
  • The less we know of ourselves, the worse qualified we are to judge correctly of others.
  • No end can be honorable that is dishonorably obtained.
  • The better a man is known to himself, the more easily he is understood by others.
  • There are two sorts of people that are never contented: they that do not know what they desire, and they that attempt impossibilities.
  • The failure of many designs is owing to a confidence of success.
  • A sure way, sometimes, to expose our virtue, is to endeavor to conceal it.
  • A man is more deserving of success, that claims not adulation as his first conquest.
  • We advise others better than ourselves.
  • Most men have two principles, one practical, another professional.
  • In cunning, our pride oftener dreads disappointment than our interest.

“Most men know how to take offence; but few know how to forgive — pride is always impatient; magnanimity, tolerant and pacific.”

| Quotations

“A Credit to the GPO”

https://books.google.com/books?id=SZZAAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA719

‘I send you a post card which was delivered safely the day after it was posted. I think the address reflects credit on both the ingenuity of the sender and the cleverness of the Post Office officials.’ — A Folkestone Correspondent

(From Strand, December 1903.) (Click to enlarge.)

UPDATE: A number of readers have asked for the solution. The Strand gives none, and perhaps had none, but a diligent postal worker who viewed the envelope edge-on would have discovered that the circle is composed of four overlapping sets of letters, offset from one another by 45 degrees and each so tall and narrow as to be otherwise unreadable. When they’re viewed at an angle, perspective condenses the letters into four phrases:

https://books.google.com/books?id=SZZAAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA719

https://books.google.com/books?id=SZZAAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA719

https://books.google.com/books?id=SZZAAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA719

https://books.google.com/books?id=SZZAAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA719

By my best reading, the address is C.H. BRUCE, ESQR, EARLS AVENUE, FOLKESTONE, ENGLAND.

| Oddities

“Locker Lotto”

A puzzle by Ying Zhou, Daniel Irving, and Walter Gall of Rhode Island College, from the February 2012 issue of Math Horizons:

A sports team is divided into “red” and “blue” groups of 10 players each. Each player puts his belongings into a bag of his team’s color and puts it into one of 20 lockers, choosing at random. All the players leave the room. Presently one of the red team returns and can’t remember which locker is his. He and the janitor make a bet: The player can keep opening lockers so long as each bag he discovers is red. If he finds his bag, the janitor will give him $7. If not, he’ll owe the janitor $1. Should the player take the bet?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

Unquote

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Henri_Brispot_Gourmand.jpg

“The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star.” — Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

| Quotations

First Things First

The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the kingdom, first ordered well their own states. Wishing to order well their states, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things.

Things being investigated, knowledge became complete. Their knowledge being complete, their thoughts were sincere. Their thoughts being sincere, their hearts were then rectified. Their hearts being rectified, their persons were cultivated. Their persons being cultivated, their families were regulated. Their families being regulated, their states were rightly governed. Their states being rightly governed, the whole kingdom was made tranquil and happy.

— Confucius, The Great Learning, 500 B.C.E

| Society

Nowhere

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ZendiaProblem-callimahos-1960.jpg

This is charming somehow: a detailed portrait of a place that doesn’t exist. During the Cold War, U.S Army cryptologist Lambros D. Callimahos devised a “Republic of Zendia” to use in a wargame for codebreakers simulating the invasion of Cuba. (Callimahos’ maps of the Zendian province of Loreno are below; click to enlarge.)

The Zendia map now hangs on the wall of the library at the National Cryptologic Museum. The “Zendian problem,” in which cryptanalysts students were asked to interpret intercepted Zendian radio messages, formed part of an advanced course that Callimahos taught to NSA cryptanalysts in the 1950s. Graduates of the course were admitted to the “Dundee Society,” named for an empty marmalade jar in which Callimahos kept his pencils.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Central_Part_of_The_Province_of_Loreno.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Northern_Part_of_The_Province_of_Loreno.jpg

08/02/2025 UPDATE: Apparently they speak Esperanto in Zendia, or at least their cartographers do. “Respubliko” is Esperanto for “Republic,” “Bovinsulo” and “Kaprinsulo” are “Cow-Island” and “Goat-Island”, and so on. (Thanks, Ed and David.)

| Art · Puzzles

The Mahler Hammer

The last movement of Mahler’s sixth symphony calls for the sound of a hammer, which the composer indicated should be “brief and mighty, but dull in resonance and with a non-metallic character (like the fall of an axe).” (The two blows represent the death of Mahler’s daughter Maria and the diagnosis of his heart condition.)

Because no recognized instrument exists to fulfill this function, symphonies have had to devise their own solutions, often striking a wooden box or bass drum with a mallet or sledgehammer. Houston Symphony percussionist Brian Del Signore built a 22-pound custom hammer and a wooden box to receive the blow.

| Art · Technology