Things are neither so grievous nor so difficult in themselves, but our weakness and cowardice make them so.

[Les choses ne sont pas si douloureuses, ny difficiles d’elles mesmes: mais nostre foiblesse & lascheté les fait telles.]

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) French essayist

Essays, Book 1, ch. 14 (1.14), “The Taste of Good and Bad Things Depends Mostly on the Opinion We Have of Them [Que le goust des biens et des maux despend en bonne partie de l’opinion que nous en avons]” (1572) [tr. Ives (1925)]
    (Source)

See Shakespeare (1600).

This essay, including this passage, were in the 1st (1580) edition. The chapter as a whole was numbered ch. 14 in the 1580 and 1588 editions, and rearranged to become ch. 40 for the 1595 ed. Most modern translations use the original numbering.

(Source (French)). Alternate translations:

Things are not of themselves so irksome, nor so hard, but our basenes, and weakenesse maketh them such.
[tr. Florio (1603)]

The things are not so painful, and difficult of themselves, but our weakness or cowardice makes them so.
[tr. Cotton (1686); Cotton/Hazlitt (1877)]

Things are not that painful or difficult of themselves; it is our weakness and cowardice that make them so.
[tr. Frame (1943)]

Things are not all that painful nor harsh in themselves: it is our weakness, our slackness, which makes them so.
[tr. Screech (1987)]

Things are not so painful or difficult in and of themselves. But our weakness and cowardice make them so.
[tr. HyperEssays (2025)]