Experience has taught me this, that we undo ourselves by impatience. Misfortunes have their life and their limits, their sickness and their health.

Montaigne contrasts the inevitability of misfortune with the avoidable damage we add through our own reactions. “We undo ourselves by impatience” suggests that anxiety, haste, and refusal to endure time’s pace can turn hardship into self-sabotage—ruining judgment, exhausting resilience, and provoking rash choices. The second sentence treats misfortunes almost as living organisms: they have a “life” and “limits,” phases of “sickness” and “health.” In other words, troubles change, peak, and pass; they are not static. The counsel is stoic in spirit: meet adversity with patience and proportion, allowing time to do its work rather than magnifying pain through frantic resistance.