The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Montaigne
• Preface
• The Author to the Reader
• Essays of Montaigne
• By Different Methods Men Arrive At the Same End.
• Of Sorrow
• Our Affections Carry Themselves Beyond Us
• How the Soul Expends Its Passions Upon False Objects, When the True Are Missed.
• Whether the Governor of a Place Besieged Ought to Go Out to Parley
• The Hour of Parley Dangerous.
• That the Intention Is Judge of Our Actions.
• Of Idleness
• Of Liars.
• Of Quick Or Slow Speech
• Of Prognostications
• Of Constancy
• Ceremony of the Interview of Kings.
• Men Are Punished For Being Obstinate In the Defence of a Fort Without Reason.
• Of the Punishment of Cowardice
• A Trait of Some Ambassadors.
• Of Fear
• That We Are Not to Judge of Our Hour Till After Death.
• That to Philosophise Is to Learn to Die.
• Of the Force of Imagination
• The Profit of One Man Is the Loss of Another.
• Of Custom, and of Not Changing a Received Law

THE AUTHOR TO THE READER

READER, here is a book of good faith; it doth at the outset forewarn thee that in it I have proposed to myself no other than a domestic and private end: I have had no consideration either to thy service or to my glory. My strength is not capable of such a design. I have dedicated it to the private commodity of my kinsfolk and friends, so that, having lost me (which they have to do shortly), they may therein recover some traits of my conditions and humors, and by that means preserve more whole and more vivid the knowledge they had of me. Had my intention been to seek the world’s favor, I should surely have adorned myself with borrowed beauties: I desire herein to be viewed, as you see me, in mine own simple, natural, and ordinary manner, without study and artifice: for it is myself I paint. My defects are herein to be read to the life: my imperfections and my natural form, so far as public respect permitted me. If I had lived among those nations which (they say) yet dwell under the sweet liberty of primitive laws of nature, I assure thee I would most willingly have painted myself quite fully and quite naked. Thus, reader, myself am the matter of my book: there’s no reason thou shouldst employ thy leisure on so frivolous and vain a subject. Adieu, then!