From "Book Two" in Essays:
… I would not give myself the trouble, sworn enemy as I am to obligation, assiduity, or perseverance: that there is nothing so contrary to my style as a continued narrative, I so often interrupt, and cut myself short in my writing for want of breath; I have neither composition nor explanation worth anything, and I am ignorant, beyond a child, of the phrases and even the very words proper to express the most common things; and for that reason it is, that I have undertaken to say only what I can say, and I have accommodated my subject to my strength.
On solitude in Complete Works of Montaigne:
... it is not enough to have gotten away from the crowd, it is not enough to move; we must get away from the love of crowds that is within us, we must sequester ourselves and regain possession of ourselves.... Abandon with the other pleasures that which comes from the approbation of others.
Book by/on Montaigne at Powell's Books
