Quote

Water, earth, air, fire, and the other parts of this structure of mine are no more instruments of your life than instruments of your death. Why do you fear your last day? It contributes no more to your death than each of the others. The last step does not cause the fatigue, but reveals it. All days travel toward death, the last one reaches it.

Michel de Montaigne

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Michel de Montaigne
Age: 59 †
Born: 1533
Born: February 28
Died: 1592
Died: September 13
Autobiographer
Essayist
French Moralist
Jurist
Philosopher
Poet Lawyer
Politician
Translator
Writer
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
Miquèu Eiquèm de Montanha
Miqueu Eiquem de Montanha
Life
Lasts
Travel
Reaches
Last
Step
Reveals
Water
Toward
Instruments
Fear
Cause
Parts
Death
Steps
Structure
Others
Days
Mines
Doe
Fire
Mine
Contributes
Earth
Causes
Air
Fatigue

More quotes by Michel de Montaigne

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The corruption of the age is made up by the particular contribution of every individual man some contribute treachery, others injustice, atheism, tyranny, avarice, cruelty, according to their power.
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A good marriage ... is a sweet association in life: full of constancy, trust, and an infinite number of useful and solid services and mutual obligations.
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Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.
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The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mould
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A man must keep a little back shop where he can be himself without reserve. In solitude alone can he know true freedom.
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Any person of honor chooses rather to lose his honor than to lose his conscience.
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Cowardice is the mother of cruelty.
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The archer who overshoots his mark does no better than he who falls short of it.
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A young man ought to cross his own rules, to awake his vigor, and to keep it from growing faint and rusty. And there is no course of life so weak and sottish as that which is carried on by rule and discipline.
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The great and glorious masterpiece of men is to live to the point. All other things-to reign, to hoard, to build-are, at most, but inconsiderable props and appendages.
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Physicians have this advantage: the sun lights their success and the earth covers their failures.
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There is nothing which so poisons princes as flattery, nor anything whereby wicked men more easily obtain credit and favor with them.
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Socrates and then Archesilaus used to make their pupils speak first they spoke afterwards. 'Obest plerumque iss discere volunt authoritas eorum qui docent.' [For those who want to learn, the obstacle can often be the authority of those who teach]
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Can anything be imagined so ridiculous that this miserable and wretched creature, who is not so much as master of himself, but subject to the injuries of all things, should call himself master and emperor of the world, of which he has not power to know the least part, much less to command the whole?
Michel de Montaigne
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Other people do not see you at all, but guess at you by uncertain conjectures.
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The great and glorious masterpiece of humanity is to know how to live with a purpose.
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If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not even think of themselves.
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It is the part of cowardice, not of courage, to go and crouch in a hole under a massive tomb, to avoid the blows of fortune.
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People of our time are so formed for agitation and ostentation that goodness, moderation, equability, constancy, and such quiet and obscure qualities are no longer felt.
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Reason has so many forms that we do not know which to choose-Experiment has no fewer.
Michel de Montaigne