I need a tower library (and less appreciation for irony)...

Thanks to TiL for letting me know that today was doubly important to Michel de Montaigne. Firstly, he was born today (well, not "today", but today in 1533). Then, as if the day was not special enough, on this same day in 1571 he retreated to his rather famous tower library. In addition to reading the works of the greats and penning various iterations of what would become his contribution to that same body of work, he carved sixty-five Greek and Latin phrases into the library rafters.

Interestingly, this one is Terence’s famous “I am human; let nothing human be foreign to me.” Personally, I find it hard to ignore the irony of the man carving this phrase into a beam of the tower he is too bound up by his own psychological issues to leave. Then again, I rather envy his life, ""Every day I spend time reading my authors, not caring about their learning, looking not for their subject matter, but how they handle it."

Perhaps more interestingly, over his bookshelves in his primary workroom, he carved:

An. Christi 1571 aet. 38, pridie cal. cart., die suo natali, Mich. Montanus, servitii aulici et munerum publicorum jamdudum pertaesus, dum se integer in doctarum virginum recessit sinus, ubi quietus et omnium securus quantillum in tandem superabit decursi multa jam plus parte spatii; si modo fata duint exigat istas sedes et dulces latebras, avitasque, libertati suae, tranquillitatique, et otio consecravit.
[1571 A.D. Michel Montaigne, 38 years old, weary of long years of public service and while still vigorous, would teach the young by returning to the bosom of his ancestral home where all is quiet and free from care, and with this little effort finally overcome the censure of public life; if his candor has caused his exile, it is to this sweet sanctuary and his own sanctified freedom, tranquility, and leisure.]

I am 39. Part of me is glad I do not have a tower to retreat to, part of me wishes for little else.