Learning should be a pleasure, and children should grow up to imagine wisdom with a smiling face, not a fierce and terrifying one. - Sarah Bakewell

From now on, Montaigne would live for himself rather than for duty.

The unusual treatment began soon after his birth, when Micheau was sent to live with a humble family in a nearby village. Having a peasant wet-nurse was normal enough, but Montaigne’s father wanted his son to absorb an understanding of commoners’ ways along with their breast milk, so that be would grow up comfortable with the people who most needed a seigneur’s help. Instead of bringing a nurse to the baby, therefore, he sent the baby to the nurse, and left him there long enough to be weaned. Even at the christening, Pierre [Montaigne’s father] had “people of the lowest class” hold the infant over the font. From the start, Montaigne had the impression at once of being a peasant among peasants, and of being very special and different. This is the mixture of feelings that would stay with him for life. H felt ordinary, but knew that the very fact of realizing his ordinariness made him extraordinary.

The trick is to maintain a kind of naïve amazement at each instant of experience—but, as Montaigne learned, one of the best techniques for doing this is to write about everything. Simply describing an object on your table, or the view from your window, opens your eyes to how marvelous such ordinary things are. To look inside yourself is to open up an even more fantastical realm.