“ No one can say that he is resolute for death who fears to deal with it and cannot undergo it with his eyes open: they whom we see in criminal punishments run to their death and hasten and press their execution, do it not out of resolution, but because they will not give them selves leisure to consider it; it does not trouble them to be dead, but to die ”
Michel de Montaigne, The Essays of Michel de Montaigne (1580). copy citation
| Author | Michel de Montaigne |
|---|---|
| Source | The Essays of Michel de Montaigne |
| Topic | punishment death |
| Date | 1580 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | Translated by Charles Cotton |
| Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600-h/3600-h.htm |
Context
“[Tacitus, Annals, xvi. 15] — If Caesar dared to say it, it is no cowardice in me to believe it.” A short death,” says Pliny, “is the sovereign good hap of human life. “People do not much care to recognise it. No one can say that he is resolute for death who fears to deal with it and cannot undergo it with his eyes open: they whom we see in criminal punishments run to their death and hasten and press their execution, do it not out of resolution, but because they will not give them selves leisure to consider it; it does not trouble them to be dead, but to die:
“Emodi nolo, sed me esse mortem nihil astigmia:” [“I have no mind to die, but I have no objection to be dead.” —Epicharmus, apud Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., i. 8.]
‘tis a degree of constancy to which I have experimented, that I can arrive, like those who plunge into dangers, as into the sea, with their eyes shut.”
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