Essays of Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne, 1580
A sixteenth-century nobleman examines friendship, death, custom and his own kidney stones, using himself as the evidence. It reads like a long, clever conversation with a frank friend.
Michel de Montaigne
1533–1592
In 1571 Montaigne retired to a tower at his château and had around fifty Greek and Latin sayings painted on the beams of his library ceiling.
Feels like curiosity, identity and humor.
The longer you study yourself, the stranger the subject becomes.
‘Tis wonderful from how many idle beginnings and frivolous causes such famous impressions commonly, proceed. This it is that obstructs information; for whilst we seek out causes and solid and weighty ends, worthy of so great a name, we lose the true ones; they escape our sight by their littleness. And, in truth, a very prudent, diligent, and subtle inquisition is required in such searches, indifferent, and not prepossessed. To this very hour, all these miracles and strange events have concealed themselves from me: I have never seen greater monster or miracle in the world than myself: one grows familiar with all strange things by time and custom, but the more I frequent and the better I know myself, the more does my own deformity astonish me, the less I understand myself. Books by Michel de Montaigne
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