In the year of Christ 1571, at the age of thirty-eight, on the last day of February, anniversary of his birth, Michel de Montaigne, lon weary of the servitude of the court and of public employments, while still entire, retired to the bosom of the learned Virgins [Muses], where in calm and freedom from all cares he will spend what little remains of his life now more than half run out. If the fates permit, he will completethis abode, this sweet ancestral retreat; and he has consecrated it to his freedom, tranquility, and leisure.

The same rule applied to his mother father and servants who were obliged to use only Latin words he himself employed and thus acquired a knowledge of the very language his tutor taught him. That is what Montaigne did and that is why he is the hero of this book. His maternal grandfather Pedro Lopez from Zaragoza was from a wealthy Marrano (Sephardic Jewish) family who had converted to Catholicism.

He is most famously known for his skeptical remark 'Que sçay-je?' ('What do I know?' in Middle French; modern French Que sais-je?). Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (French: [miʃɛl ekɛm də mɔ̃tɛɲ]; February 28 1533 – September 13 1592) was one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance known for popularising the essay as a literary genre and commonly thought of as the father of modern skepticism. Montaigne had a direct influence on writers the world over including René DescartesBlaise Pascal Jean-Jacques Rousseau William HazlittRalph Waldo Emerson Friedrich Nietzsche Stefan Zweig Eric HofferIsaac Asimov and possibly on the later works of William Shakespeare.