Michel de Montaigne

Emerson treats Montaigne as one of those rare persons who, in their character and actions, answer questions we have not skill to put — a man who inhabits a higher sphere of thought and sees things in true light and large relations. His service is indirect: he is great because he is what he is from nature, and never reminds us of others, satisfying expectation and falling into place. He matters because he represents the skeptic type, showing how a man in his place is constructive, fertile, and magnetic, making his own channels like a river making its shores.