Montaigne: Essays

The Essays: A Selection

Michel de Montaigne - The Complete Essays

The Cambridge Companion to Montaigne

From Wikipedia
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (February 28, 1533 – September 13, 1592) was one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance. Montaigne is known for popularizing the essay. He became famous for his effortless ability to merge serious intellectual speculation with casual anecdotes and autobiography — and his massive volume Essais (translating 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 Shakespeare to Emerson, from Nietzsche to Rousseau.
In his own time, Montaigne was admired more as a statesman than as an author. His tendency in his essays to diverge into anecdotes and personal ruminations was seen as a detriment rather than an innovation, and his stated motto that "I am myself the matter of my book" was viewed by contemporary writers as self-indulgent. In time, however, Montaigne would be recognized as expressing, perhaps better than any other author of his time, the doubts and thoughts of his age. 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 than any other author of the Renaissance. Much of modern literary non-fiction owes its genesis to Montaigne, and writers of all kinds continue to read Montaigne for his masterful balance of intellectual knowledge and personal story-telling.
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“The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them... Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.”