Wherever your life ends, it is all there. The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use; some men have lived long, and lived little; attend to it while you are in it. It lies in your will, not in the number of years, for you to have lived enough.

This passage is associated with Montaigne’s reflections on mortality in the Essays, written after he withdrew from public life to his library tower and began composing the work (first published 1580; expanded in later editions). In the wake of recurrent illness, the deaths of friends, and the era’s religious and civil turmoil, Montaigne repeatedly returns to the question of how to live under the certainty of death. The lines come from his argument that one should not postpone living until some imagined “later,” because life’s completeness is not guaranteed by duration. The emphasis is on present attention and deliberate use of one’s time rather than anxious calculation of how long one might last.

The saying contrasts mere duration with the quality and intentionality of living. It argues that a life is not “completed” by accumulating years but by exercising one’s will—choosing how to use time, attention, and moral agency. The line “attend to it while you are in it” urges presence and deliberate action rather than postponement, implying that procrastination and distraction can make even a long life feel empty. The final claim—that it lies in your will, not in years, to have lived enough—frames sufficiency as an inner measure: a person can reach a sense of completeness through purposeful living, regardless of when death arrives.