In Montaigne’s eyes, living is being forced ahead through a landscape of hidden landmines. If none get you, the Grim Reaper deals you his trump card, a natural death.
To die of old age is a death rare, extraordinary, and singular, and therefore so much less natural than the others. `Tis the last and extremest sort of dying, and the more remote the less to be hoped for. It is indeed the boundary of life, beyond which we are not to pass: which the law of nature has pitched for a limit not to be exceeded.
(Quoted from page 13 of the March, 2015, issue of The Scientist.)
For a brief biography of Michel de Montaigne, click here. For images of or relating Michel de Montaigne, click here.
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