I quote others only in order to better express myself.

Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) is famous for the densely allusive style of his Essays, where he weaves classical and contemporary quotations into a self-portrait of his mind at work. Writing largely in retirement at his tower library in the 1570s–1580s, he defended this practice against charges of pedantry or mere compilation. For Montaigne, citation is not primarily an appeal to authority but a tool for thinking: he borrows others’ words when they capture an experience or nuance he recognizes in himself. The remark belongs to his broader reflections on reading, learning, and the proper use of borrowed learning in the Essays.

The line reframes quotation as self-expression rather than deference. Montaigne suggests that another writer’s phrasing can serve as a sharper instrument for articulating one’s own perceptions, especially when language fails to match the subtlety of lived experience. It also implies an ethics of reading: the point of learning is assimilation and transformation, not display. In Montaigne’s essayistic method, the self is not isolated but formed in dialogue with books; quoting becomes a way to test, refine, and sometimes contradict one’s own thoughts. The statement thus anticipates modern ideas of intertextuality and the essay as a record of thinking in conversation with tradition.