ALL TIME WORLDWIDE BESTSELLER: THE COMPLETE 3 VOLUME ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE (Special Complete and Unabridged Nook Edition) by MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE Montaigne's Essays Complete and Unabridged [Featured in The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton]

ALL TIME WORLDWIDE BESTSELLER: THE COMPLETE 3 VOLUME ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE (Special Complete and Unabridged Nook Edition) by MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE Montaigne's Essays Complete and Unabridged [Featured in The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton]

ALL TIME WORLDWIDE BESTSELLER: THE COMPLETE 3 VOLUME ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE (Special Complete and Unabridged Nook Edition) by MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE Montaigne's Essays Complete and Unabridged [Featured in The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton]

ALL TIME WORLDWIDE BESTSELLER: THE COMPLETE 3 VOLUME ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE (Special Complete and Unabridged Nook Edition) by MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE Montaigne's Essays Complete and Unabridged [Featured in The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton]

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Overview

ALL TIME WORLDWIDE BESTSELLER:
THE COMPLETE 3 VOLUME ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE

(Special Complete and Unabridged Nook Edition)
by MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

Montaigne's Essays Complete and Unabridged
[Featured in The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton]


The Essays is a collection of 107 short philosophical works written by Michel de Montaigne that was first published in 1580. Montaigne essentially invented the literary form of essay, a short subjective treatment of a given topic, of which the book contains a large number. (Essai is French for "trial" or "attempt").

Montaigne's stated goal is to describe man, and especially himself, with utter frankness. Montaigne's writings are studied within literary studies, as literature and philosophy.
Inspired by his consideration of the lives and ideals of the leading figures of his age, he finds the great variety and volatility of human nature to be its most basic features. He describes his own poor memory, his ability to solve problems and mediate conflicts without truly getting emotionally involved, his disdain for man's pursuit of lasting fame, and his attempts to detach himself from worldly things to prepare for his timely death. He writes about his disgust with the religious conflicts of his time, reflecting a spirit of skepticism and belief that humans are not able to attain true certainty. The longest of his essays, Apology for Raymond Sebond, contains his famous motto, "What do I know?"


EXCERPTS

"To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind for it."

"Obsession is the wellspring of genius and madness."

"Everyone calls barbarity what he is not accustomed to."

"If you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved."

"When I play with my cat, how do I know that she is not playing with me rather than I with her?"

"Life in itself is neither good nor evil, it is the place of good and evil, according to what you make it."

"The continuous work of our life is to build death."

"If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because it was he, because it was I."

"Kings and philosophers defecate, and so do ladies."

"I enter into discussion and argument with great freedom and ease, inasmuch as opinion finds me in a bad soil to penetrate and take deep root in. No propositions astonish me, no belief offends me, whatever contrast it offers to my own. There is no fancy so frivolous and so extravagant that it does not seem to me quite suitable to the production of the human mind."

"Our religion is made to eradicate vices, instead it encourages them, covers them, and nurtures them."

"Human understanding is marvellously enlightened by daily conversation with men, for we are, otherwise, compressed and heaped up in ourselves, and have our sight limited to the length of our own noses."

"Not being able to govern events, I govern myself."

"The clatter of arms drowns the voice of law."

"No matter that we may mount on stilts, we still must walk on our own legs. And on the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom."

"Nothing is so firmly believed as that which least is known."

"Man cannot make a worm, yet he will make gods by the dozen."

"I have gathered a garland of other men’s flowers, and nothing is mine but the cord that binds them."

"No man is a hero to his own valet."

"The only thing certain is nothing is certain."

"Whether the events in our life are good or bad greatly depends on the way we perceive them."

"I believe it to be true that dreams are the true interpreters of our inclinations; but there is art required to sort and understand them."

Product Details

BN ID: 2940013087286
Publisher: The Consolation of Philosophy Press
Publication date: 12/11/2011
Series: The Consolation of Philosophy Press
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Sales rank: 643,884
File size: 1 MB

About the Author

Lord Michel de Montaigne (February 28, 1533 – September 13, 1592, was one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance, known for popularising the essay as a literary genre and is popularly thought of as the father of Modern Skepticism. 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, including René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Stefan Zweig.

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 non-fiction has found inspiration in Montaigne and writers of all kinds continue to read him for his masterful balance of intellectual knowledge and personal story-telling.
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