Michel de Montaigne Quotes

One can no more look steadily at death than at the sun.

He who doesn't fear death dies only once.

We all have to die, and I preferred to have just one death. It seems to me that to suffer insult without response is to die many deaths.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there.

Teach me to live, that I may dread The grave as little as my bed. Teach me to die.

L'ide e qu'on mourra est plus cruelle que mourir, mais moins que l'ide e qu'un autre est mort. The idea of dying is worse than dying itself, but less cruel than the idea that another has died.

Few people know death, we only endure it, usually from determination, and even from stupidity and custom; and most men only die because they know not how to prevent dying.

Worry is yet another side effect of dying.

Death, the most dreaded of evils, is therefore of no concern to us; for while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist.

Human beings are afraid of dying. They are always running after something: money, honor, and pleasure. But if you had to die now, what would you want?

Everything I do has the tinge of the finite, of my own demise. At some point you either accept death or you just keep pushing it back as you get older and older. I've accepted it.

I think about death most of the day, every day. We can't escape death, and choosing to ignore it only makes it more scary.

I'm terrified I'm about to die, or that all the people I love are about to die, every second of every day.

I don't want to hear about my death.

It is not death, but dying, which is terrible.

It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.

What we think of as our sensitivity is only the higher evolution of terror in a poor dumb beast. We suffer for nothing. Our own death wish is our only real tragedy.

Dying before dying has two important consequences: It liberates the individual from the fear of death and influences the actual experience of dying at the time of biological demise.

I do fear death. But what I actually fear is not dying. I mean, true, it will be sad. But I know that there is a better place waiting for me.

The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead.

I don't have a fear of aging or a fear of death.

Being ill like this combines shock - this time I will die - with a pain and agony that are unfamiliar, that wrench me out of myself.

I don't fear death so much as I fear its prologues: loneliness, decrepitude, pain, debilitation, depression, senility. After a few years of those, I imagine death presents like a holiday at the beach.

I think about death every day - what it would be like, why it would happen to me. It would be humiliating to be afraid.

It's only Western civilization that, God forbid, you talk about dying, when it's the only thing we know for certain, right? Everyone's going to die, so what's the big problem? 'Oh, God. Don't talk about it. Don't think about it.' I mean, I'm one of them. I'm not a big fan of talking about dying.