Quote
By Michel de Montaigne
The greatest thing in the world is for a man to know that he is his own.
- Source
- Essays of Michel de Montaigne, translated by Charles Cotton, 1877 · Book I, chapter 38, Of Solitude
- Read at
- Translated by Charles Cotton; edited and revised by William Carew Hazlitt (London, 1877); Project Gutenberg eBook #3600
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From the essay Of Solitude (Book I, chapter 38 in Charles Cotton's translation, revised by W. C. Hazlitt, 1877). Montaigne wrote in French, so this is the translator's wording and other translations differ. A popular rendering, "to know how to belong to oneself", is another translator's wording. It follows the lines "let the remainder be our own, but not so joined and so close as not to be forced away without flaying us or tearing out part of our whole."