Michel de Montaigne
essayist · near Bordeaux, France · 1533–1592
At thirty-eight he gave up his seat as a magistrate, settled in the tower of his chateau and made himself his subject. He called what he wrote "attempts" (essais).
Posts
1580s
When I play with my cat who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me? We mutually divert one another with our play.Essays, book 2, chapter 12, "Apology for Raymond Sebond" · in place of the original: the English translation by Charles Cotton (1686, revised by Hazlitt in 1877)
1580s · Of his friend La Boétie, who had died before him
If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because it was I.Essays, book 1, "Of Friendship" · in place of the original: the English translation by Charles Cotton (1686, revised by Hazlitt in 1877)
1 in 100 Billion · The social network of those who came before us