or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering
More Buying Choices
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
Tell the Publisher!
I'd like to read this book on Kindle

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.
Sorry, this item is not available in
Image not available for
Color:
Image not available

To view this video download Flash Player

 

Montaigne: Essays [Paperback]

Michel de Montaigne , John M. Cohen
4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)

List Price: $16.00
Price: $11.80 & FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Details
You Save: $4.20 (26%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
Only 14 left in stock (more on the way).
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.
Want it tomorrow, June 19? Choose One-Day Shipping at checkout. Details

Formats

Amazon Price New from Used from
Paperback $11.80  
Mass Market Paperback --  
Image
Save on Popular Books This Summer
Browse our Bookshelf Favorites store for big savings on popular fiction, nonfiction, children's books, and more.

Book Description

July 1, 1993
Reflections by the creator of the essay form, display the humane, skeptical, humorous, and honest views of Montaigne, revealing his thoughts on sexuality, religion, cannibals, intellectuals, and other unexpected themes. Included are such celebrated works as "On Solitude," "To Philosophize Is to Learn How to Die," and "On Experience."

Frequently Bought Together

Montaigne: Essays + Inferno (Bantam Classics)
Price for both: $18.06

Buy the selected items together
  • Inferno (Bantam Classics) $6.26

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought


Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Michel Eyquem, Seigneur de Montaigne, was born in 1533, the son and heir of Pierre, Seigneur de Montaigne (two previous children dying soon after birth). He was brought up to speak Latin as his mother tongue and always retained a Latin turn of mind; though he knew Greek, he preferred to use translations. After studying law he eventually became counselor to the Parlement of Bordeaux. He married in 1565. In 1569 he published his French version of the Natural Theology of Raymond Sebond; his Apology is only partly a defense of Sebond and sets skeptical limits to human reasoning about God, man and nature. He retired in 1571 to his lands at Montaigne, devoting himself to reading and reflection and to composing his Essays (first version, 1580). He loathed the fanaticism and cruelties of the religious wars of the period, but sided with Catholic orthodoxy and legitimate monarchy. He was twice elected Mayor of Bordeaux (1581 and 1583), a post he held for four years. He died at Montaigne (1592) while preparing the final, and richest, edition of his Essays.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 416 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin Books; 1st Printing edition (July 1, 1993)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 014017897X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0140178975
  • Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.7 x 7.8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #23,585 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
(11)
4.7 out of 5 stars
4 star
0
3 star
0
1 star
0
Life's simple pleasures are still of utmost importance even when he is suffering greatly with illness. Rebecca of Amazon  |  5 reviewers made a similar statement
This is a complete set of the Essays, together with a helpful introduction and notes for reading. FrKurt Messick  |  5 reviewers made a similar statement
This collection of essays along with the writings of Dr. Samuel Johnson come highly reccomended. Brian D. Fitzpatrick  |  1 reviewer made a similar statement
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
67 of 67 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A Superior Translation of a Great Writer February 19, 2005
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Over the years I have kept a copy of the Essays by my favorite reading chair to be enjoyed at random, particularly in the middle of the night when Entropy seems to hold the upper hand. They exercise a remarkable calming effect.

Seduced by the idea of having a complete set of all the Essays, I initially opted for the Screech translation, but found it wooden and pedantic. I moved to the Cohen translation, which does not include all of the Essays, but has all of the major ones and is far more enjoyable.
Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
77 of 81 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Handbook for Life April 17, 2000
Format:Paperback
A wonderful book to have for life. I already have the full version with detailed Essays of Montaigne, but this small paperback version is one which goes with me everywhere. It is my handbook to life and thoughts. I've had this book for long, handed to me by my father. I find all daily life substance and teachings with me when I read these wonderful notes, which are not only the thoughts reflecting a person but almost everyone of us. The chapters 'On the power of the imagination' and 'On the uncertainty of our judgement' relates so much to our own daily thoughts and actions- when I feel I have the power to do everything and then bringing it down to reality ... but the words written here in these chapters again fills me with power and optimism but also with a touch of pragmatism. I find this book thoroughly engrossing and often get back to it. These Essays are what all-time classics are made of.
Was this review helpful to you?
44 of 46 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A Portrait of a Fascinating Bibliomaniac June 11, 2005
Format:Paperback
"My library is in the third story of a tower; on the first is my chapel, on the second a bedroom with ante-chambers, where I often lie to be alone; and above it there is a great wardrobe...Adjoining my library is a very neat little room, in which a fire can be laid in winter, and which is pleasantly lighted by a window." Montaigne, On Three Kinds of Relationships

From the start, Montaigne (1533-1592) shows his great love of writing about life and his ultimate pleasure: exercising his mind through the discussion of philosophy. He also loved to point out incongruity and excelled in making logical conclusions.

His honesty seems to be his most attractive quality as he addresses the horror and beauty of life. At times he seems to almost be a reporter describing experience, detached and unemotional. Then when he delves into friendship he shows a new depth of emotion.

"There is no action or thought of mine in which I do not miss him, as he would have missed me. For just as he infinitely surpassed me in every other talent and virtue, so did he also in the duties of friendship." ~Montaigne, On Friendship

Montaigne's writing is at times a history lesson. He draws from the writings of Ovid, Cicero, Horace, Socrates, Plato, Seneca, Virgil and Petrarch.

His topics are fascinating and get even more interesting when he talks about the custom of wearing clothes, the Platonic paradox or why churches use incense. He explores the power of the imagination, truth and error, friendship, why civilized man is at times no better than a savage in his actions and freely discusses his ideas about education.

I must say that when he discusses books, this topic overflows and ends up in other essays.
... Read more ›
Was this review helpful to you?
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars An enlightened consciousness October 9, 2005
Format:Paperback
Michel de Montaigne is considered by many to be the inventor of the literary form of the essay, so the collection from which these excerpts come is important in several ways. Montaigne was a humanist and a skeptic in his philosophical approach, and essentially looked at his own experience as the first topic for examination always.

The book of Essays was one he worked on periodically throughout his life, issuing different editions, the first of which appeared in 1580. Montaigne's style of writing is sometimes stream-of-consciousness, sometimes structured in more formal styles.

Montaigne's stated task in his preface to the reader is for self-examination, but it becomes very clear that Montaigne sees himself as an 'everyman' character. He strives for full-disclosure; indeed, he writes that were he another culture 'which are said to live still in the sweet freedom of nature's first laws', then he might have appeared naked.

This is a complete set of the Essays, together with a helpful introduction and notes for reading. As Montaigne added to his essays periodically, they are not necessarily in the order he wrote them, but this collection has preserved their order according to his standards.

Montaigne's essays show a pessimism and skepticism, perhaps based on the kinds of conflicts between Catholics and Protestants going on, in France and elsewhere, as well as the periodic flare of plague. He was a humanist who saw cultures as having value internal to themselves and preferred to not universalise morals, laws and other ideas.
... Read more ›
Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars "Reader, thou hast here an honest book..." May 20, 2006
Format:Paperback
Montaigne is considered the father the personal essay. And within them, it seems, there is not a topic he didn't cover. After serving in the Bordeaux Parlement, in 1570 "he retired to his chateau...to read, think, and write." This is where his essays are born, late in his life, and soon to be suffering from kidney stones, which would take his life (he discusses his mistrust of doctors in "Of The Resemblance Of Children To Their Fathers")

The tone of essays reveal someone who was highly skeptical and pessimestic. But you quickly gain a sense of how intelligent and honest this man was. Montaigne, in the preface, implies the essays are written to discover and reveal himself and recommends that no one should waste their "leisure about so frivolous and vain a subject." Although, here he is greatly mistaken. Montaigne, to me, was a genius; and there is so much wisdom one can part with after reading only a few of his essays, as can be seen in his influence over brillant minds like Shakespeare and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Any library would seem bare without him.

Some favorite quotes from his essays:
"The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself."

"A man should keep for himself a little back shop, all his own, quite unadulterated, in which he establishes his true freedom and chief place of seclusion and solitude."

"Even on the most exalted throne in the world we are only sitting on our own bottom."
Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Search Customer Reviews
Only search this product's reviews

What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?


Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store

If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store. Learn more

Forums

There are no discussions about this product yet.
Be the first to discuss this product with the community.
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 





Look for Similar Items by Category