Behold what it is to choose treasures well, that may be freed from injury, and to hide them in a place where no man may enter, and which cannot be betrayed but by ourselves. A man that is able may have wives, children, goods, and chiefly health, but not so tie himself onto them that his felicity depends on them. We should reserve a storehouse for ourselves, what need soever change; altogether ours, and wholly free, wherein we may hoard up and establish our true liberty, and principal retreat and solitariness, wherein we must go alone to ourselves, take out ordinary entertainment, and so privately that no acquaintance or communication of any strange thing may therein find place; there to discourse, to meditate and laugh, as without wife, without children, and goods, without train or servants; that if by any occasion they be lost it seems not strange to us to pass it over; we have a mind moving and turning in itself; it may keep itself company; it hath wherewith to offend and defend, wherewith to receive, and wherewith to give. Let us not fear that we shall faint and droop through tedious and mind-trying idleness in this solitariness.

From Montaigne’s Essays, translated by J. Florio, Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2005, p. 114.