Quotation
Last reviewed:
“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.”
Michel de Montaigne · Renaissance humanism · Renaissance · 1580
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes belonging to oneself as a capacity to retreat into a mind that is not wholly owned by office, crowd, or display. Solitude, in the essay, can be practised in a city if the inner room is real, and it can fail in the country if one drags the crowd inside. A rival reading hears a lifestyle of isolation, leaving family and city behind as the only greatness. He is ranking a form of self-possession above ambition; The sentence is in the essay on solitude.
Did Michel de Montaigne really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. Screech's translation of On Solitude, Essays book one, chapter 39. Montaigne is talking about an inner room one can inhabit, not about cutting every tie. The French is his. This wording is a translation.
Where it comes from
Essays I.39
Approximate date: 1580.
How to use it
A councillor in Bath can sit in a full room and still not belong to herself if every sentence is aimed at the next election leaflet. The greatness he names would be the ability to return to a judgement that is not the room's. It would not require resigning the council; It would require a place, even a quarter of an hour, that the leaflet does not own.
A mindset reading
Belonging to oneself is easy to confuse with selfishness or with refusing help. The essay is closer to an old philosophical retreat: do not let the role be the whole person. A rival use praises people who will not be relied on, and calls that solitude; He is talking about an inner reserve that makes dependence on reputation less absolute, not about abandoning the people one owes.
Understand the philosophy
On Solitude distinguishes a physical withdrawal from the philosophical one, and it prefers the second. The key term is belonging to oneself, a self-possession that ambition and the opinion of others are always trying to buy. Screech's English keeps the superlative, which is deliberate and a little provocative in a writer so interested in friendship. The essay does not cancel the chapter on La Boetie; It limits what public life may take.
- self
- freedom
- virtue
FAQ
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes belonging to oneself as a capacity to retreat into a mind that is not wholly owned by office, crowd, or display. Solitude, in the essay, can be practised in a city if the inner room is real, and it can fail in the country if one drags the crowd inside. A rival reading hears a lifestyle of isolation, leaving family and city behind as the only greatness. He is ranking a form of self-possession above ambition; The sentence is in the essay on solitude.
Did Michel de Montaigne really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. Screech's translation of On Solitude, Essays book one, chapter 39. Montaigne is talking about an inner room one can inhabit, not about cutting every tie. The French is his. This wording is a translation.
Which work is it in?
Essays I.39 Approximate date: 1580.