The Complete Essays

by Michel de Montaigne

Yet if we compare our own span against eternity or even against the span of mountains, rivers, stars, trees or, indeed, of some animals, then saying shorter or longer becomes equally ridiculous.

Death is one of the attributes you were created with; death is a part of you; you are running away from yourself; this being which you enjoy is equally divided between death and life. From the day you were born your path leads to death as well as life:

[As we are born we die; the end of our life is attached to its beginning.]

All that you live, you have stolen from life; you live at her expense. Your life’s continual task is to build your death. You are in death while you are in life: