“I do not portray being,” he wrote, “I portray passing. Not the passing from one age to another … but from day to day, from minute to minute.” — Sarah Bakewell Copy Share Image
“I do not portray being,” he wrote, “I portray passing. Not the passing from one age to another … but from day to day, from minute… — Sarah Bakewell Copy Share
“to see the world exactly as you did half an hour ago is impossible, just as it is impossible to see it from the… — Sarah Bakewell Copy Share
“As the modern critic David Quint has summed it up, Montaigne would probably interpret the message for humanity in Christ’s crucifixion as being “Don’t… — Sarah Bakewell Copy Share
“He blushed to see other Frenchmen overcome with joy whenever they met a compatriot abroad. The would fall on each other, cluster in a… — Sarah Bakewell Copy Share
“He distinguishes between the German word Seiende, which can refer to any individual entity, such as a mouse or a church door, and Sein,… — Sarah Bakewell Copy Share
“Starting from where you are now, you choose. And in choosing, you also choose who you will be. If this sounds difficult and unnerving,… — Sarah Bakewell Copy Share
“Instead, this cup of coffee is a rich aroma, at once earthy and perfumed; it is the lazy movement of a curlicue of steam… — Sarah Bakewell Copy Share
“As history has repeatedly suggested, nothing is more effective for demolishing traditional legal protections than the combined claims that a crime is uniquely dangerous,… — Sarah Bakewell Copy Share
“The Childhood of a Leader’, written in 1938, Sartre examined a character, Lucien, who shores up an identity for himself as an anti-Semite mainly… — Sarah Bakewell Copy Share
“Over the centuries, this interpretation and reinterpretation creates a long chain connecting a writer to all future readers- who frequently read each other as… — Sarah Bakewell Copy Share
“Be free from vanity and pride. Be free from belief, disbelief, convictions, and parties. Be free from habit. Be free from ambition and greed.… — Sarah Bakewell Copy Share
“If you fail to grasp life, it will elude you. If you do grasp it, it will elude you anyway.” — Sarah Bakewell Copy Share
“Montaigne’s half-century was so disastrous for France that it took another half-century to recover from it—and in some ways recovery never came, for the… — Sarah Bakewell Copy Share
“Reading Plutarch, he lost awareness of the gap in time that divided them—much bigger than the gap between Montaigne and us. It does not… — Sarah Bakewell Copy Share
