Quote by Michel de Montaigne: “Because it was him, because it was me.”

When Montaigne was asked why he loved his friend Étienne de La Boétie so deeply, this was his only answer. Some connections resist rational explanation — they exist because two particular people met at a particular moment and recognised something. This is the most honest thing you can say about love.

Montaigne wrote his essay On Friendship after the death of his closest friend La Boétie from dysentery in 1563. He grieved the loss for years and described their connection as the defining relationship of his life, one that no subsequent friendship could approach.

French Renaissance philosopher and writer credited with popularising the essay as a literary form. His three-volume Essais, first published in 1580, explored personal experience as a lens for universal human questions with remarkable candour and wit.