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:
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 and yours truly gave it up with only a litte 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.
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michel_de_montaigne.html.