“For Montaigne, the death of youth, which so often takes place unnoticed is the harder death; what we habitually refer to as 'death' is no more than the death of old age...The leap from the attenuated survival of senescence into nonexistence is much easier than the sly transition from heedless youth crabbed and regretful age.”

“Life versus Death becomes, as Montaigne pointed out, Old Age versus Death. ”

“It strikes me that this may be one of the differences between youth and age: when we are young, we invent different futures for ourselves; when we are old, we invent different pasts for others.”

“When you are young, you think that the old lament the deterioration of life because this makes it easier for them to die without regret. When you are old, you become impatient with the way in which the young applaud the most insignificant improvements … while remaining heedless of the world’s barbarism. I don’t say things have got worse; I merely say the young wouldn’t notice if they had. The old times were good because then we were young, and ignorant of how ignorant the young can be.”

“Yes, of course we were pretentious -- what else is youth for?”

“we must be precise with love, its language and its gestures. If it is to save us, we must look at it as clearly as we should learn to look at death”

“He died a modern death, in hospital,........after medical science had prolonged his life to a point where the terms on which it was being offered were unimpressive.”