How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

by Sarah Bakewell

But Montaigne had learned something more surprising: that he could enjoy the same delightful floating sensations even while his body seemed to be convulsed, thrashing around in what looked to others like torment. This discovery of Montaigne’s ran counter to his classical models; it also defied the Christian ideal which dominated his own era. For Christians, one’s last thought should be