It is not reasonable that art should win the place of honor over our great and powerful mother Nature. We have so overloaded the beauty and richness of her works by our inventions that we have quite smothered her.

Michel De Montaigne
About This Quote

This quote is in reference to the idea that the world is overpopulated with art. We have become so obsessed with art that we have smothered the beauty of nature. When you are thrown into a crowded room, you can smell the smell of urine, blood, sweat, and all sorts of other foul things that come off people. There are so many people in that room that it becomes hard to breathe.

When you leave the crowded room, there is still a residual smell left behind. That smell lingers in your nostrils after you leave. Although it is not strong, it is still there.

This is what this quote refers to. The world has so many people in it that it has become hard to breathe because there are so many people around us and we have become so inundated with art and culture and everything else that we feel smothered by it all. However, we need to remember that we don’t need to be overwhelmed by all of this mass culture and mass produced art.

We should be able to absorb as much as we want without overloading ourselves with too much information at once.

Source: Cannibales

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More Quotes By Michel De Montaigne
  1. If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.
  2. The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
  3. I do not care so much what I am to others as I care what I am to myself.
  4. I quote others only in order the better to express myself.
  5. Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens.
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