19 June 2017

Pass.

Rembrandt, Monk Reading, 1661


When evening has come, I return home and go into my study. On the threshold I strip off my muddy, sweaty, workday clothes, and I put on the robes of court and palace, and in this graver dress I enter the antique courts of the ancients and am welcomed by them, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, for which I was born. There I make bold to speak with them and to ask the motives for their actions, and they, in their humanity, reply to me. And for the space of four hours I forget the world, remember no vexations, fear poverty no more, tremble no more at death: I pass into their world.

Niccolò Machiavelli

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