Quotes from The Complete Essays

“On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.”
― Michel de Montaigne, quote from The Complete Essays

“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.”
― Michel de Montaigne, quote from The Complete Essays

“I quote others only in order the better to express myself.”
― Michel de Montaigne, quote from The Complete Essays

“When I am attacked by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books. They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.”
― Michel de Montaigne, quote from The Complete Essays

“He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.”
― Michel de Montaigne, quote from The Complete Essays

“If I speak of myself in different ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways.”
― Michel de Montaigne, quote from The Complete Essays

“Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own.”
― Michel de Montaigne, quote from The Complete Essays

“If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.”
― Michel de Montaigne, quote from The Complete Essays

“There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.”
― Michel de Montaigne, quote from The Complete Essays

“I am afraid that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, and that we have more curiosity than understanding. We grasp at everything, but catch nothing except wind.”
― Michel de Montaigne, quote from The Complete Essays

“Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens.”
― Michel de Montaigne, quote from The Complete Essays

“Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.”
― Michel de Montaigne, quote from The Complete Essays

“Combien de choses nous servoyent hier d’articles de foy, qui nous sont fables aujourd’huy?

How many things served us yesterday for articles of faith, which today are fables for us?”
― Michel de Montaigne, quote from The Complete Essays

“I find I am much prouder of the victory I obtain over myself, when, in the very ardor of dispute, I make myself submit to my adversary’s force of reason, than I am pleased with the victory I obtain over him through his weakness.”
― Michel de Montaigne, quote from The Complete Essays

“Off I go, rummaging about in books for sayings which please me.”
― Michel de Montaigne, quote from The Complete Essays

“The greater part of the world's troubles are due to questions of grammar.”
― Michel de Montaigne, quote from The Complete Essays

“I do not believe, from what I have been told about this people, that there is anything barbarous or savage about them, except that we all call barbarous anything that is contrary to our own habits.”
― Michel de Montaigne, quote from The Complete Essays

“[Marriage] happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.”
― Michel de Montaigne, quote from The Complete Essays

“Why do people respect the package rather than the man?”
― Michel de Montaigne, quote from The Complete Essays

“No wind favors he who has no destined port.”
― Michel de Montaigne, quote from The Complete Essays

“No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately.”
― Michel de Montaigne, quote from The Complete Essays

“It is a disaster that wisdom forbids you to be satisfied with yourself and always sends you away dissatisfied and fearful, whereas stubbornness and foolhardiness fill their hosts with joy and assurance.”
― Michel de Montaigne, quote from The Complete Essays

“Other people do not see you at all, but guess at you by uncertain conjectures.”
― Michel de Montaigne, quote from The Complete Essays

“The thing I fear most is fear.”
― Michel de Montaigne, quote from The Complete Essays

“Judgement can do without knowledge: but not knowledge without judgement.”
― Michel de Montaigne, quote from The Complete Essays

“The finest souls are those that have the most variety and suppleness.”
― Michel de Montaigne, quote from The Complete Essays

“The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use; some men have lived long, and lived little; attend to it while you are in it. It lies in your will, not in the number of years, for you to have lived enough.”
― Michel de Montaigne, quote from The Complete Essays

“Every other knowledge is harmful to him who does not have knowledge of goodness.”
― Michel de Montaigne, quote from The Complete Essays

“Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre of sentiment and resolution, in the suffering of human accidents.”
― Michel de Montaigne, quote from The Complete Essays

About the author

Popular quotes

“I wonder where he lies. Wedged under a rock, with a thousand small mouths already sucking on his spongy flesh. Or floating still, on and down, on and down, to wider, calmer reaches of the river. I see them gathering: the drowned, the shot. Their hands float out to touch each other, fingertip to fingertip. In a day, two days, they will glide on, a funeral flotilla, past the unfinished white dome rising out of its scaffolds on a muddy hill in Washington. Will the citizens recognize them, the brave fallen, and uncover in a gesture of respect? Or will they turn away, disgusted by the bloated mass of human rot?”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from March

“He laughed with a kind of mirthless bark.”
― Jane Smiley, quote from A Thousand Acres

“Very slowly Elizabeth leaned forward until her forehead rested on his shoulder, shuddering with pleasure and relief at the feel of him, at his smell.”
― Sara Donati, quote from Into the Wilderness

“It’s four o’clock, guys. I’m going up to watch Oprah. Unless the shop catches fire or we’re under massive zombie invasion, I don’t exist for the next hour. On second thought, don’t bother me if it’s zombies – I’ll deal with them later. Today’s a special episode on how to make peace with people who piss you off. And I definitely need to find my Zen. (Bubba)
Your Zen’s shooting stuff, Bubba. Embrace your inner violence. (Mark)
Fine, then. My inner violence says I’ll cut your throat if you bother me until Oprah ends, so sod off. (Bubba)”
― Sherrilyn Kenyon, quote from Infinity

“As much as I live I shall not imitate them or hate myself for being different to them”
― Orhan Pamuk, quote from Snow

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.