Montaigne turns his skeptical gaze on himself, wandering through fear, friendship, and death to ask, 'What do I know?'
Books mentioned in The Essays (14)
Metamorphoses by Ovid: “The first taste which I had for books came to me from the pleasure in reading the fables of Ovid's Metamorphoses; for, being about seven or eight years old, I gave up all other diversions to read them…”
The Aeneid by Virgil: “But this was enough to make me neglect the other lessons that were prescribed me; … for by this means I ran through Virgil's AEneid, and then Terence, and then Plautus, and then some Italian comedies, allured by the sweetness of the subject…”
Amadis of Gaul by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo: “for as for the Lancelot of the Lake, the Amadis of Gaul, the Huon of Bordeaux, and such farragos, by which children are most delighted with, I had never so much as heard their names, no more than I yet know what they contain…”
The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio: “Amongst books that are simply pleasant, of the moderns, Boccaccio's Decameron, Rabelais, and the Basia of Johannes Secundus (if those may be ranged under the title) are worth reading for amusement.”
Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto: “This conception of mine is nowhere more demonstrable than in comparing the AEneid with Orlando Furioso; of which we see the first, by dint of wing, flying in a brave and lofty place, and always following his point: the latter, fluttering and hopping from tale to tale…”
The Georgics by Virgil: “I have always thought that, in poesy, Virgil, Lucretius, Catullus, and Horace by many degrees excel the rest; and signally, Virgil in his Georgics, which I look upon as the most accomplished piece in poetry…”
Plutarch's Lives by Plutarch: “What profit shall he not reap as to the business of men, by reading the Lives of Plutarch?”
The Republic by Plato: “I refer to her Plato's cave in his Republic, and the physicians, who so often submit the reasons of their art to her authority…”
Laws by Plato: “'Tis marvellous to see how solicitous Plato is in his Laws concerning the gaiety and diversion of the youth of his city, and how much and often he enlarges upon the races, sports, songs, leaps, and dances…”
Natural Theology (Theologia Naturalis) by Raymond of Sebond: “Peter Bunel, … presented him at his departure with a book, entitled _Theologia naturalis; sive Liber Creaturarum, magistri Raimondi de Sebonde._ And as the Italian and Spanish tongues were familiar to my father, … he hoped that, with a little help, he might be able to understand it…”
Golden Epistles by Antonio de Guevara: “this I had lately out of Guevara's Letters. Whoever gave these the title of Golden Epistles had another kind of opinion of them than I have.”
Tusculan Disputations by Cicero: “Should I have died less cheerfully before I had read Cicero's Tusculan Quastiones? I believe not…”
Axiochus by Plato: “When I find myself disgusted with Plato's 'Axiochus', as with a work, with due respect to such an author be it spoken, without force, my judgment does not believe itself…”
Memoirs by Martin and Guillaume du Bellay: “Upon the Memoirs of Monsieur du Bellay I find this: "'Tis always pleasant to read things written by those that have experienced how they ought to be carried on…"”
Books that mention The Essays (4)
Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: “prove the very thing which _Montaigne_ dreaded his Essays should turn out, that is, a book for a parlour-window”
The History of Henry Esmond by William Makepeace Thackeray: “where he tried to read, as his custom was; but he never knew what he was reading until afterwards he remembered the appearance of the letters of the book (it was in Montaigne's Essays)”
Representative Men by Ralph Waldo Emerson: “A single odd volume of Cotton's translation of the Essays remained to me from my father's library, when a boy.”