Daily Inspiration Quote by Michel de Montaigne

Love, for Montaigne, is the one feeling that refuses to be put on trial. The line lands with a shrug that’s actually a provocation: you want reasons, a ledger of virtues and benefits, but the deepest attachment isn’t an argument you can win. “Because it was he, because it was I” is deliberately circular, a small rhetorical loop that blocks the reader from slipping in tidy explanations like status, utility, or even shared interests. It’s not anti-intellectual; it’s a defense of a part of life that intellectual systems keep trying to annex.

The intent is both personal and philosophical. Montaigne is writing out of the Renaissance habit of self-inquiry, but he draws a boundary around friendship (and, by extension, love) as something irreducible. The subtext is almost combative: if you demand a reason, you’ve already misunderstood the thing. This is affection as recognition, not as reward. The grammar makes identity do the work. “He” and “I” aren’t placeholders for qualities; they’re whole persons, stubbornly intact, resisting being broken into traits that could be compared, optimized, or replaced.

Context sharpens the stakes. Montaigne’s famous friendship with Etienne de La Boetie was elevated in the Essays as an ideal, even as Europe was being shredded by religious wars and ideological certainties. Against that climate, the quote quietly argues for a bond that isn’t founded on doctrine, bloodline, or transaction. It works because it refuses the marketplace logic of explanation and insists, almost scandalously, that some commitments are justified by presence alone.