Body:

It is much better to be tied to one wonderful thing than to allow a mere catalog of wonderful things to deprive you of the capacity to wonder.

Title: G. K. Chesterton

Body:

Of all forms of literature, however, the essay is the one which least calls for the use of long words.

Title: Virginia Woolf

Body:

Were we to illuminate the most ordinary, common, and familiar of things, then the greatest miracles of nature and the most marvelous examples, especially concerning human actions, might be formed.

Title: Michel de Montaigne

Body:

Others have taken heart to speak of themselves because they found the subject worthy and rich; I, on the contrary, because I have found mine so pointless and so meager that no one could suspect me of ostentation.

Title: Michel de Montaigne

Body:

Everything I see or hear is an essay in bud. The world is everywhere whispering essays, and one need only be the world’s amanuensis.

Title: Alexander Smith

Body:

[The "light" essay] offers no instruction, save through the medium of enjoyment, and one saunters lazily along with a charming unconsciousness of effort.

Title: Agnes Repplier

Body:

The task of the essayist is to collect the fruit of his experience, reflect on it, and set it out for our consideration.

Title: Ian Jack

Body:

The world is not so much in need of new thoughts as that when thought grows old and worn with usage it should, like current coin, be called in, and, from the mint of genius, reissued fresh and new.

Title: Alexander Smith

Body:

And on the loftiest throne in the world we are still sitting only on our own rump.

Title: Michel de Montaigne

Body:

One can tie up all moral philosophy with an ordinary and private life just as easily as with a life of richer stuff: Each person bears the entire form of the human condition.

Title: Michel de Montaigne

Body:

As it maps the territory of the self, the essay details the particulars of everyday life…. The wonder is not that art can be made of such ordinary stuff, but that we should expect it to be found anywhere else.

Title: G. Douglas Atkins

Body:

As for me … I enjoy living among pedestrians who have an instinctive and habitual realization that there is more to a journey than the mere fact of arrival.

Title: E. B. White

Phyllis Rose

Phyllis Rose is a biographer, essayist, literary critic, and portrait photographer. Her essays and literary criticism pieces have been published by The New York Times, The Yale Review, and The American Scholar among other publications. Rose was professor of English at Wesleyan University for more than 35 years. She currently photographs writers and artists.

Phyllis Rose

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