Every man beareth the whole stamp of human condition. Authors communicate themselves onto the world by some special and strange mark; I the first, by my general disposition, as Michel de Montaigne, not as a grammarian, or a poet, or a lawyer. If the world complain I speak too much of myself, I complain it thinks no more of itself. But is it reason, that being so private in use I should pretend to make myself public in knowledge? Or is it reason I should produce into the world, where fashion and art have such sway and command, the raw and simple effects of nature, and of a nature as yet exceeding weak? To write books without learning, is it not to make a wall without stone or suchlike thing? Conceits of music are directed by art, mine by hap. Yet have I this according to learning, that never man handled subject he understood or knew better than I do this I have undertaken, being therein the most cunning man alive.

From Montaigne’s Essays, translated by J. Florio, Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2005, p. 224.