"Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work." — Gustave Flaubert.
Kant was born in Konigsberg and lived his entire life without leaving his native province. He became Professor of Philosophy at the University of Konigsberg in 1770 and published Critique of Pure Reason in 1781. Heine's description of him is often quoted :
"The life of Immanuel Kant is hard to describe ; he has indeed neither life nor history in the proper sense of the words. He lived an abstract, mechanical, old-bachelor existence, in a quiet, remote street in Konigsberg, an old city at the northeastern boundary of Germany. I do not believe that the great cathedral clock of that city accomplished its day's work in a less passionate way than its countryman, Immanuel Kant. Rising from bed, coffeee-drinking, writing, lecturing, eating, walking, everything had its fixed time ; and the neighbours knew that it must be exactly half-past four when they saw Professor Kant, in his grey coat, with his cane in his hand, step out of his house door, and move toward the little lime-tree avenue, which is named, after him, the Philosopher's Walk. Eight times he walked up and down that walk at every season of the year : and when the weather was bad, his servant, old Lampe, was seen anxiously following him with a large umbrella under his arm, like an image of Providence. Strange contrast between the outward life of the man, and his world-destroying thought. Of a truth, if the citizens of Konigsberg had had any inkling of the meaning of that thought, they would have shuddered before him as before an executioner. But the good people saw nothing in him but a professor of philosophy ; and when he passed at the appointed hour, they gave him friendly greetings — and set their watches."
More recent scholarship suggests Kant was a gregarious young man, and only adopted a regulated and orderly life in his later years.