Montaigne declares to the reader that his book is an honest self-portrait: 'I am myself the subject of my book.'

Montaigne argues that both submission and defiant valor can win mercy from a conqueror, since human nature is 'vain and variable.'

After retiring to write, Montaigne discovers his unguided mind wanders into 'chimeras and fantastic monsters' without any order or purpose.

Montaigne argues that regularly confronting the idea of death frees us from anxiety and allows us to enjoy life more fully.

Montaigne argues that imagination alone is powerful enough to kill, cure, or physically alter the human body without any medicine.

Montaigne advises a countess that a tutor should have character over learning, and that the world itself is the best schoolbook.

Montaigne describes his friendship with Étienne de la Boétie as so rare and perfect it can occur perhaps once every three centuries.

Montaigne argues that Brazilian natives live more honorably than Europeans, who 'surpass them in every sort of barbarism.'

Montaigne argues that true retirement requires escaping not just civic life but one's own persistent ambitions and desires.

Montaigne sides with Democritus's laughing mockery of human folly over Heraclitus's sorrowful weeping, finding mockery more fitting.

Thrown from his horse and losing consciousness, Montaigne discovers that the approach of death felt gentle and dreamlike, not agonizing.

Montaigne argues that cruelty is the worst of all vices, even when it is wielded in the service of justice.

Montaigne confesses widespread personal failings: poor memory, chronic indecision, and ignorance of the basic workings of his own estate.

Religious warfare and plague force Montaigne to evacuate his estate while marauders loot it; peasants face death with quiet courage.

La Boétie argues that a tyrant rules only because subjects willingly consent to their own servitude and refuse to withdraw it.

Montaigne opens his essays with the declaration that he himself is the only subject worth writing about, setting the tone for a lifetime of honest self-examination. Across Book 1, he tackles death, imagination, education, friendship, and the supposed savagery of Brazilian natives, consistently turning conventional wisdom on its head. His retirement from public life becomes the occasion for the essays themselves, and his bond with La Boétie becomes their emotional center. In Books 2 and 3, Montaigne deepens his reflections on virtue, cruelty, and self-knowledge, drawing on a brush with death after a riding accident to argue that dying may be far gentler than we fear. Religious warfare and plague arrive at his doorstep, forcing him to confront survival and mortality in real time. The collection closes with La Boétie's thunderclap argument that tyranny endures only because subjects willingly consent to it.

The core arguments and turning points of Montaigne's selected essays.

Translators explain they prepared a new American English edition of Montaigne's essays to make them accessible to modern readers.

Montaigne recounts how his brother died suddenly after a tennis ball struck him above the ear during a game.

Montaigne declares his ideal death is to be caught actively at work: 'I want death to find me planting my cabbages.'

A count terrified of wedding-night witchcraft is cured when Montaigne invents an elaborate ritual to calm the count's imagination.

Montaigne argues parents are too tender to educate their own children effectively and that outside tutors are better suited to the task.

Montaigne argues philosophy should be the very first subject a child studies, not a later or advanced course of learning.

Montaigne dismisses all bonds of family, romantic love, and marriage as incapable of producing genuine, complete friendship.

Brazilian natives visiting France ask why the poor do not seize the wealthy 'by the throat or set fire to their houses.'

Canius Julius, condemned to die unjustly, vows to use his final conscious moment to observe the departure of his own soul.

Cato the Younger slices open his own entrails to guarantee death rather than accept a pardon from Julius Caesar.

Montaigne scoffs at old men who suddenly take up languages or physical training, declaring such pursuits suited only to the young.

Montaigne witnesses a conjoined-twin toddler and argues that even such apparent deformity is part of Nature's inscrutable plan.

Montaigne declares he rarely repents his actions because he judges himself by his own internal court of conscience, not others' opinions.

Bandits who stop Montaigne's traveling party return his horses and possessions, saying his open face made him undeserving of robbery.

La Boétie explains how tyrants deliberately weaken subjects through entertainments, festivals, and hired foreign soldiers rather than native armies.

Where Pool 1 tracks Montaigne's boldest claims, this pool highlights the stories and supporting insights that give those claims texture and life. A brother's sudden death on a tennis court, a count's wedding-night crisis, and visiting Brazilians' sharp-eyed questions about French poverty all illustrate how imagination, mortality, and cultural assumptions play out in actual human lives. Montaigne's advice on child-rearing, his dismissal of ordinary friendship, and his contempt for old men chasing youth add further contour to his vision of how to live well. Books 2 and 3 bring tales of a condemned man determined to observe his own soul's departure, Cato's stoic suicide, a conjoined twin, and bandits who return stolen goods—all stories Montaigne uses to test and sharpen his philosophy. The pool closes with La Boétie's political insight that tyrants sustain control through spectacle and hired foreign arms rather than through any genuine loyalty from native subjects.

The vivid anecdotes and supporting arguments behind Montaigne's major essays.

Montaigne begins writing down his disordered thoughts in hopes of shaming his idle mind into better focus and discipline.

Montaigne argues that the gradual loss of youth is actually a harder death than the physical dying that comes at life's end.

Montaigne argues it is not death itself that frightens people but the grim trappings and ceremony with which we surround it.

A man plagued by repeated failures cures himself by openly confessing his weakness to others before it has the chance to strike.

Montaigne argues that doctors cure patients primarily through imagination and suggestion rather than through the actual power of their remedies.

Montaigne argues education must be pleasurable and condemns punishment as something that 'debases and deadens a well-born nature.'

Montaigne rails against those who published La Boétie's essay merely to use its arguments as incitement to rebel against the crown.

Montaigne expresses sadness that European contact has already begun corrupting Brazilian native culture and will likely destroy it entirely.

Montaigne argues that virtue requiring no personal struggle may no longer deserve to be called virtue, even when performed by Socrates.

Montaigne identifies La Boétie as the only person he has known with a truly admirable soul: 'beautiful in every direction.'

Montaigne admits that writing about himself has transformed him from within: 'painting myself for others I have painted myself within.'

Montaigne argues lying is among the worst vices because deception destroys all the bonds that hold human society together.

Montaigne encounters a wealthy old thief performing good deeds to compensate for past crimes and rejects this as not true repentance.

Montaigne declares life's true duty is to compose oneself well rather than compose books, and savors pleasure as he ages gracefully.

La Boétie reveals that a tyrant's network of rewarded functionaries—not his armed forces—is the true engine that sustains his power.

This pool traces the moments in Montaigne's essays where an argument tips, a truth arrives unexpectedly, or a familiar idea reveals a hidden edge. Beginning with Montaigne's decision to write down his chaotic thoughts as a form of self-discipline, the pool moves through startling claims: that losing youth is worse than dying, that doctors heal through fiction, and that education built on punishment destroys exactly what it means to cultivate. The middle section turns on friendship, truth, and honesty—Montaigne's defense of La Boétie, his anger at those who weaponized La Boétie's essay, and his confession that writing has quietly remade him from within. By Books 2 and 3, the revelations grow sharper: virtue may not apply to those for whom goodness is effortless, an old thief's charity is not repentance, and genuine living matters more than any book written about it. The pool ends with La Boétie's most penetrating insight—that tyranny survives not through armed force but through the web of people who profit from sustaining it.

The discoveries, reversals, and emotional revelations woven through Montaigne's self-portrait.