I think it was during my first year in high school that I began to read Montaigne’s essays and eventually I read all 137 of them…and continue to re-read several dozen personal favorites. In How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer, Sarah Bakewell observes, “’How to Live‘ is not the same as the ethical question, ‘How should one live.’ Moral dilemmas interested Montaigne, but he was less interested in what people ought to do than in what they actually did. He wanted to know how to live a good life — meaning a correct or honorable life, but also a fully human, satisfying, flourishing one…Yet to read Montaigne is to experience a series of shocks of familiarity, which make the centuries between him and the 21st century reader collapse to nothing.”

Consider this observation by Bernard Levin when writing on the subject for The Times in 1991: “I defy any reader of Montaigne not to put down the book at some point and say with incredulity: ‘How did he know all that about me?’ The answer is, of course, that he knows it by knowing all about himself.”

For example:

o I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.

o Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.

o Rejoice in the things that are present; all else is beyond thee.

o The soul which has no fixed purpose in life is lost; to be everywhere, is to be nowhere.

o In nine lifetimes, you’ll never know as much about your cat as your cat knows about you.

o I quote others only in order the better to express myself.

o Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.

o A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.

o Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.

o Stubborn and ardent clinging to one’s opinion is the best proof of stupidity.

o A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself.

o If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.

o It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.

o Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head.

o Let us permit nature to have her way. She understands her business better than we do ours. .

o Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.

o We can be knowledgeable with other men’s knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men’s wisdom.

o It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.

* * *

According to my research sources, Michel de Montaigne was a 16th century French author who developed the essay (literally, “to attempt” to reveal, explore, learn, explain, etc.) as a literary genre. His first two books of essays were published in 1580. Born into a French family of minor nobility on February 28, 1533, Michel de Montaigne held a seat in the Bordeaux parliament. He retired from public life and began to write a series of philosophical and personal essays in 1571. This writing was the first of its kind, making Montaigne responsible for the establishment of the essay (an “attempt”) as a literary genre. He died in France on September 13, 1592.

I highly recommend Sarah Bakewell’s brilliant biography as well as Montaigne’s essays, now available in several dozen different editions. My preference is for The Complete Works (Everyman’s Library). Also included in this complete edition of his works are Montaigne’s letters and travel journal, fascinating records of the experiences and contemplations that would shape and infuse his essays. Montaigne speaks to us always in a personal voice in which his virtues of tolerance, moderation, and understanding are dazzlingly manifest. Donald M. Frame’s masterful translation is widely acknowledged to be the classic English version.

If you prefer a selection of Montaigne’s best essays, I recommend The Essays: A Selection (Penguin Classics), with M. A. Screech serving as editor, translator, and author of the introduction.