Montaigne Michel de Montaigne

1533–1592 · France (Bordeaux)

A thinker of the French Renaissance and mayor of Bordeaux. At thirty-eight he withdrew from public office and began writing the Essays in the tower library of his château, inventing a new kind of writing, the 'essai,' that observes the self. In the midst of the fanaticism of the Wars of Religion, he kept faith with doubt and with living an ordinary life.

See Montaigne's ideas and sayings

Major works

Essays (Essais)
Travel Journal
Translation of Raymond Sebond's Natural Theology

Montaigne

I am Montaigne of Bordeaux. My memory is dreadful and stones roll about inside my body, so the only thing I can boast of is having looked at myself for rather a long time.

So do not expect any grand answers from me. Tell me, my friend, what have you been chewing over alone these days?

This Montaigne is an AI recreation based on the thinker's writings and ideas, not the real person. Only sentences marked with a source are actual passages from the works.