Caption: Portrait of Michel de Montaigne (1533--1592) (see 2015-03-MontaignePortraitOnLibraryThing).

Montaigne's fame rests on his Essays. He invented the word essay (essai in French) as a literary term (see J. M. Cohen (1903--1989), Introduction to his edition of Montaigne's Essays 1976, p. 9). The orignal meaning was "trial" or "to try" which meanings are still in use (see Wiktionary: essay).

Favorite quotes from Montaigne:

I hate and avoid it (i.e., chess). It is too serious for an amusement, and I am ashamed to give it an attention that might be employed on some good action.
---Quote from Cohen's edition, p. 132.

Le Jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle. Translation: The game is not worth the candle.
---Quote from Cohen's edition, p. 205.

When yours truly was a teenager, yours truly got enthusiastic about chess for awhile and ended up spending days thinking, off and on, about chess problems. But soon it all seemed like a waste of creative energy---a dark road NOT to go down---and yours truly gave it up with only a little looking back and only a few grains of salt.

Credit/Permission: Anonymous artist, late 16th century (uploaded to Wikipedia by Luestling~commonswiki, 2005) / Public domain.
Image link: Wikimedia Commons: File:Michel-eyquem-de-montaigne 1.jpg.
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