" I am at grips with the worst, the most sudden, the most painful, the most mortal, and the most irremediable of all diseases. I have already experienced five or six very long and painful attacks of it. And yet I flatter myself, or there are even in this state means of standing fast for a man whose soul is free from the fear of death and unburdened of the menaces, conclusions, and consequences with which the doctors stuff our heads. But the actual pain itself is not such a harsh and piercing sharpness as to drive a well-balanced man to rage and despair. I have at least this advantage from my stone: that it will achieve what I had not hitherto been able to bring about in myself in order to become wholly reconciled and acquainted with death for the more it oppresses and troubles me, the less fearful will death be to me. I had already attained the point of only being attached to life for the sake of life, but my pain will dissolve even this understanding; and God grant that in the end, if its sharpness happens to exceed my strength, it may not drive me to the other no less wicked extreme of longing and wishing to die."
Michel de Montaigne 1533-1592
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