Michel de Montaigne: Selected Essays

by Michel de Montaigne, William Carew Hazlitt (Editor), Charles Cotton (Translator)

One of France's great Renaissance thinkers, Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) invented the essay as a literary form. This compilation features the best of his brief, highly readable reflections on poetry, philosophy, theology, law, literature, education, and world exploration.


Remarkably modern in their views, the essays continue to resonate with readers as their author bemoans his failing memory, criticizes his culture's obsession with celebrity, and attempts to pursue a more spiritual life. Abounding in aphorisms and anecdotes, enlivened by wordplay and a delightful folksiness, Montaigne's writings constitute a celebration of literacy, friendship, and joie de vivre.

228 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 12, 2013

About the author

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1532-1592) was one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance. Montaigne is known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. He became famous for his effortless ability to merge serious intellectual speculation with casual anecdotes and autobiography—and his massive volume Essais (translated literally as "Attempts") contains, to this day, some of the most widely influential essays ever written. Montaigne had a direct influence on writers the world over, from William Shakespeare to René Descartes, from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Stephan Zweig, from Friedrich Nietzsche to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He was a conservative and earnest Catholic but, as a result of his anti-dogmatic cast of mind, he is considered the father, alongside his contemporary and intimate friend Étienne de La Boétie, of the "anti-conformist" tradition in French literature.

In his own time, Montaigne was admired more as a statesman then as an author. The tendency in his essays to digress into anecdotes and personal ruminations was seen as detrimental to proper style rather than as an innovation, and his declaration that, "I am myself the matter of my book", was viewed by his contemporaries as self-indulgent. In time, however, Montaigne would be recognized as embodying, perhaps better than any other author of his time, the spirit of freely entertaining doubt which began to emerge at that time. He is most famously known for his skeptical remark, "Que sais-je?" ("What do I know?").

Remarkably modern even to readers today, Montaigne's attempt to examine the world through the lens of the only thing he can depend on implicitly—his own judgment—makes him more accessible to modern readers than any other author of the Renaissance. Much of modern literary nonfiction has found inspiration in Montaigne, and writers of all kinds continue to read him for his masterful balance of intellectual knowledge and personal storytelling.