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

“I do not care so much what I am to others as I care what I am to myself.”
― Michel de Montaigne 

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

“I quote others only to better express myself.”
― Michel de Montaigne, 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, Les Essais 

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

“A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.”
― Michel de Montaigne 

“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 

“Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.”
― Michel de Montaigne