Over the years, I have paid very little attention to Montaigne’s short 10th essay “On a Ready or Hesitant Delivery,” and I think that’s unfortunate. For one, it’s the only essay that begins with a quote from Etienne de la Boetie: Never to all men were all graces given. The essay is an admission that…

Montaigne’s Virgil essay is most famous for being his most extensive writing about sex, but in my opinion, his Ovid-featuring essay “That Difficulty Increases Desire,” is by far his most erotic. This short piece is stuffed with colorful quotes, but two from Ovid stand out: If she would reign long, let her scorn her lover….

Of all the subjects that Montaigne assays, nothing is more confusing to me than his thoughts on love. Friendship he examines in emotive detail. Sex he covers thoroughly, even if I find the result something akin to a sex ed lecture about himself. Even beauty he gets around to extolling in On Physiognomy. But love,…

Repentance is one of the core principles of the Catholic faith. We are not expected to be perfect in our acts, but we are expected to recognize when we have sinned, to confess those sins to a priest, to perform some small act, such as recitation of prayers, and then make a sincere effort not…

I’ve been thinking this morning about what necessity this project serves for me. It is a similar one Montaigne explained in his essay “On Giving The Lie.” The purpose is certainly not to become better known, for as Montaigne wrote, the general public will only be interested in the thoughts of the most famous anyway:…

I’ve been thinking today about how it’s possible that I could have missed that long segment about beauty from Montaigne in On Physiognomy, so I went back and re-read the essay once more. And it immediately became apparent just how—this is one of the most insanely structured pieces of writing that I’ve ever come across,…