Top 50 Michelle Moran Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Things change, and not always for the better.”

— Michelle Moran

2. “Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habit. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.”

— Michelle Moran

3. “After all, that’s why we read historical fiction-to be transported to another time, and to be astonished at ancient people’s lives and traditions, just as they would probably be astonished at ours.”

— Michelle Moran

4. “RAMESSES II is one of the most well-known and widely written-about kings of ancient Egypt. A copy of his Treaty of Kadesh, written in cuneiform and discovered in the village of Hattusas, hangs in the United Nations building in New York as the world’s earliest example of an international peace treaty. It is also believed that Ramesses is the Pharaoh responsible.”

— Michelle Moran

5. “When a storm comes, bamboo bends. It doesn’t break.”

— Michelle Moran

6. “Even in the most wretched life, there’s hope.”

— Michelle Moran

7. “I was a queen, and you took away my crown; a wife, and you killed my husband; a mother, and you deprived me of my children. My blood alone remains: take it, but do not make me suffer long. – MARIE ANTOINETTE.”

— Michelle Moran

8. “Where the world is full of a thousand colors for those who love books, I suspect it is simply black and gray to everyone else.”

— Michelle Moran

9. “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. – THOMAS JEFFERSON.”

— Michelle Moran

10. “I held Nefertiti’s body closer to mine, trying to press her spirit into me, to bring it back. But the reign of Nefertiti was finished. She was gone from Egypt.”

— Michelle Moran

11. “I always thought the purpose of time was to move forward, not backward.”

— Michelle Moran

12. “Because he is weak and shallow, and you should learn to recognize men who are afraid of others with power, Mutnodjmet.”

— Michelle Moran

13. “I wonder if our names determine our destiny, or if destiny leads us to choose certain names.”

— Michelle Moran

14. “You can’t change the desert. You can only take the fastest course through it. Wishing it’s an oasis won’t make it so...”

— Michelle Moran

15. “My love is unique an none can rival her. Just by passing, she has already stolen away my heart.”

— Michelle Moran

16. “In Egypt, there is a saying: When good fortune looks down upon us, it does so in threes, one for each part of the Eye of Horus. His upper lid, his lower lid and the eye itself.”

— Michelle Moran

17. “But that’s how the heart is. Stubborn and foolish.”

— Michelle Moran

18. “But we are all sorry when loss comes for us. The test of our character comes not in how many tears we shed but in how we act after those tears have dried.”

— Michelle Moran

19. “Sometimes, it is not the kings and queen who make for the most fascinating history but the shadowy souls who happen to be in the right place at the right time.”

— Michelle Moran

20. “And grief, for anyone who has ever experienced it, is exactly like a predator. It steals first your happiness, and then – if you allow it – everything else.”

— Michelle Moran

21. “You want it to feel like a surprise. You want to keep him guessing whether he’ll make you smile entirely so that when you do, he will feel like he’s been given a gift.”

— Michelle Moran

22. “Why does life carry some people on the crest of the wave while others drown beneath the water?”

— Michelle Moran

23. “Man was born free and everywhere he is in shackles. –JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU.”

— Michelle Moran

24. “I’d always thought I would feel like an animal released from its cage when my student days were finished, I felt more like a bird that had been pushed from its nest and told it must fly.”

— Michelle Moran

25. “Sometimes, it is not the kings and queen who make for the most fascinating history but the shadowy souls who happen to be in the right place and the right time. While Marie certainly would not have considered herself lucky to have lived through such a devastating period, history is fortunate that she remained still for long enough to record the events that raged on around her.”

— Michelle Moran

26. “But it is not an option for women like myself and Rose Bertin. Men want wives who are sweet and good with children, not women who plan and watch the accounts.”

— Michelle Moran

27. “This is how memories are; what seems so clear and unforgettable at one moment vanishes like steam the next.”

— Michelle Moran

28. “There are natural and imprescriptible rights which an entire nation has no right to violate. – MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE.”

— Michelle Moran

29. “And when that time comes, let’s hope your friends outnumber your enemies.”

— Michelle Moran

30. “You will never have to marry for money. You will never have to depend on anyne but yourself.”

— Michelle Moran

31. “Sometimes, Anu, we have to take actions that make us sad because it’s the right thing to do for the future.”

— Michelle Moran

32. “After all, memoirs are not open doors into another person’s house. They are more like broken windows, with the owner trying to explain away all of the damage.”

— Michelle Moran

33. “Now you are no longer a giggling child, smiling at whoever comes along. You are a woman with power. Learn to control your smile, and you can control what men will think about you.”

— Michelle Moran

34. “We all die. Some of use are fortunate to die fighting for justice.”

— Michelle Moran

35. “We can help pave the roads of those around us, but we can’t choose their direction.”

— Michelle Moran

36. “The only words free of suspicious motives will be the ones I find in books.”

— Michelle Moran

37. “I don’t think unhappiness is fated.”

— Michelle Moran

38. “We’ve all done things we’d rather keep in the dark. It’s only by shedding light on them that our demons can disappear.”

— Michelle Moran

39. “In the arts the way in which an idea is rendered, and the manner in which it is expressed, is much more important than the idea itself. – JACQUES-LOUIS DAVID.”

— Michelle Moran

40. “I understand that you are still grieving. But we will always be grieving.”

— Michelle Moran

41. “What I think and what Iam prepared to say are entirely different things.”

— Michelle Moran

42. “Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your.”

— Michelle Moran

43. “The only thing money is good for, Marie, is buying time. The time to do the things you like.”

— Michelle Moran

44. “Even prisoners can escape if they have books.”

— Michelle Moran

45. “If the gods cannot recognize your names,” she warned, “they will never hear your prayers.”

— Michelle Moran

46. “Some people are so impoverished all they have is gold.”

— Michelle Moran

47. “You’ll know if he loves you by how long he’s willing to fight.”

— Michelle Moran

48. “This isn’t how I imagined our lives would be when I was Queen of Libya and you King of Armenia.”

— Michelle Moran

49. “If you have ever met someone who rarely reads, then you will understand the blank look Moti gave me. For nonreaders, life is simply what they touch and see, not what they feel when they open the pages of a play and are transported to the Forest of Arden or Illyria. Where the world is full of a thousand colors for those who love books, I suspect it is simply black and gray to everyone else. A tree is a tree to them; it is never a magical doorway to another world populated with beings that don’t exist here.”

— Michelle Moran

50. “Grandmother was like an opal. You could never be sure which colors were really there and which were just tricks of the light.”

— Michelle Moran