The agreeable eye

an eudæmonistarchives

Montaigne 1.30

The Queen, Hans Holbein the Younger
vos conturbemini.

For to him whom fasting would make more healthful and more sprightly, and to him to whose palate fish were more acceptable than flesh, the prescription of these would have no curative effect; no more than in the other sort of physic, where drugs have no effect upon him who swallows them with appetite and pleasure: the bitterness of the potion and the abhorrence of the patient are necessary circumstances to the operation. The nature that would eat rhubarb like buttered turnips, would frustrate the use and virtue of it; it must be something to trouble and disturb the stomach, that must purge and cure it; and here the common rule, that things are cured by their contraries, fails; for in this one ill is cured by another.

—Montaigne (‘Of Moderation’)1

  1. Cotton’s translation. []

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ego hoc feci mm–MMXXIV · cc 2000–2024 M.F.C.