Michel de Montaigne

"The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself." The Essays of Montaigne are a collection of writings from the late 16th century. Montaigne's stated goal in his book is to describe man, and especially himself, with utter frankness and honesty. The essays are surprisingly, modern and have, served as foundational texts for much of Western philosophy and culture.

"An NYRB Classics Original Shakespeare, Nietzsche once wrote, was Montaigne's best reader. It is a typically brilliant Nietzschean insight, capturing the intimate relationship between the ever-changing record of the mutable self constituted by Montaigne's Essays and Shakespeare's kaleidoscopic register of human character. For all that, how much Shakespeare actually read Montaigne remains a matter of uncertainty and debate to this day. That he read...

At head of title: Michel de Montaigne.