It is much better to be tied to one wonderful thing than to allow a mere catalog of wonderful things to deprive you of the capacity to wonder.
G. K. Chesterton
Of all forms of literature, however, the essay is the one which least calls for the use of long words.
Virginia Woolf
Were we to illuminate the most ordinary, common, and familiar of things, then the greatest miracles of nature and the most marvelous examples, especially concerning human actions, might be formed.
Michel de Montaigne
Others have taken heart to speak of themselves because they found the subject worthy and rich; I, on the contrary, because I have found mine so pointless and so meager that no one could suspect me of ostentation.
Michel de Montaigne
Everything I see or hear is an essay in bud. The world is everywhere whispering essays, and one need only be the world’s amanuensis.
Alexander Smith
[The "light" essay] offers no instruction, save through the medium of enjoyment, and one saunters lazily along with a charming unconsciousness of effort.
Agnes Repplier
The task of the essayist is to collect the fruit of his experience, reflect on it, and set it out for our consideration.
Ian Jack
The world is not so much in need of new thoughts as that when thought grows old and worn with usage it should, like current coin, be called in, and, from the mint of genius, reissued fresh and new.
Alexander Smith
And on the loftiest throne in the world we are still sitting only on our own rump.
Michel de Montaigne
One can tie up all moral philosophy with an ordinary and private life just as easily as with a life of richer stuff: Each person bears the entire form of the human condition.
Michel de Montaigne
As it maps the territory of the self, the essay details the particulars of everyday life…. The wonder is not that art can be made of such ordinary stuff, but that we should expect it to be found anywhere else.
G. Douglas Atkins
As for me … I enjoy living among pedestrians who have an instinctive and habitual realization that there is more to a journey than the mere fact of arrival.
E. B. White

The Charm of the Personal Essay

Read­ing a per­son­al es­say is like en­joy­ing a com­fort­able con­ver­sa­tion with a thought­ful friend – on a porch swing, per­haps, with a sum­mer breeze and ice-clinked glasses of lem­on­ade, or on an even­ing stroll in crisp au­tumn air, crunch­ing mul­ti­colored leaves un­der­foot. Words move at a leis­urely pace, in fa­mil­i­ar lan­guage, of­ten play­ful, some­times pok­ing fun at one­self, and are spoken can­didly but not care­lessly. Your friend might share bits of wis­dom or trivia, but you are primar­ily in­ter­ested in the per­son her­self and the in­ter­est­ing pro­ces­sion of her thoughts, not in col­lect­ing new in­form­a­tion or force­ful opin­ions. Be­sides, you know this friend (and your­self) well enough to know that opin­ions and ob­ser­va­tions can change to­mor­row, if they have not already changed in the course of con­ver­sa­tion.

The ped­es­tri­an, the leis­urely ex­plorer of close-to-home ex­per­i­ence, is a com­mon per­sona of per­son­al es­say­ists. Go­ing on a walk has been a fre­quent es­say sub­ject. Re­lated sub­jects, also fre­quently es­sayed, in­clude solitude, idle­ness, leis­ure, books and read­ing, and nature. Why these sub­jects? Be­cause most es­say­ists have val­ued pass­ive at­tent­ive­ness and re­flec­tion over pon­ti­fic­a­tion and blind striv­ing through life. First and fore­most, an es­say­ist can­didly re­flects upon him­self: upon the fluc­tu­ations of his own thoughts and emo­tions, for ex­ample, or upon the per­sist­ent tempta­tion to in­flate him­self and to strive after achieve­ments, or upon his will­ful blind­ness to the ab­surdity of life in the face of death. Hav­ing de­veloped a knack for self-re­flec­tion, the es­say­ist no­tices in­ter­est­ing things about the world around him – things that es­cape the no­tice of oth­ers who race from one activ­ity to an­oth­er. Also, be­cause the es­say­ist has can­didly taken stock of him­self, he can­not help but con­sider him­self with hu­mor, con­sider oth­ers with good­will, and con­sider life with a light heart. He or she be­comes, in oth­er words, a coveted com­pan­ion for a walk. ornament

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