Stoic quotes on death

To leave this life, if there are gods, is nothing to fear — they will not involve you in evil. If gods do not exist or do not care, what is it to live without gods or providence?

We plot long sea-journeys, postponed homecomings, campaigns of war, the slow climb of offices — while death stands quietly beside us. Because we picture it falling only on a neighbour, daily losses press around us almost unseen.

I do the only thing I can: not drown in fear, nor scream, nor blame God. What has been produced must perish. I am a man, a part of the whole, as an hour is part of the day.

Look at death in itself. Strip away the images your imagination adds. You will find it is nothing but an operation of nature. To fear an operation of nature is childish.

When you kiss your child, brother, or friend, do not give full rein to the impression; let pleasure not run unchecked. Check it, curb it — as those who stand behind men at their triumphs remind them they are mortal.

Two things to keep in mind. All things from eternity repeat in like forms — a hundred years sees nothing new. And the longest-lived and the soonest to die both lose just the same.

Cast off this hunger for life. The hour of your suffering matters little — suffer you must, at some season. What counts is not the length of your living, but its nobility.

If death surprises me busy about these things, it is enough if I can say to God: the means I received from you for following your administration, I have not neglected.

Everything of the body is a stream. Everything of the soul, a dream and vapor. Life is a war and a stranger's stay. After fame, oblivion. What can guide a person? One thing only: philosophy.

Every day, every hour, exposes how slight we are — proof anew that frailty has slipped our minds. As we plot for ages to come, the moments force a glance behind, where Death waits.

Whatever I am — a little flesh, breath, and a ruling mind. Throw away your books. Stop distracting yourself. As if dying now, despise the flesh: blood and bones, a weaving of nerves and veins.

The very day you dread as the close of everything is the dawn of your eternity. Why hold back? Set down your burden — you have already left this hiding-place of flesh once before.

Never value anything as profitable which would compel you to break your promise, lose your self-respect, hate, suspect, curse, or play the hypocrite. The one who prefers his own intelligence and inner deity needs neither solitude nor crowds.

Sometimes life must be drawn back and held at the lip's edge, even with great pain, for the loved ones who count on us. The good man lives not while pleased to, but while bound by duty.

Think how many physicians are dead after frowning over the sick, how many philosophers after endless talk of death, how many heroes after killing thousands, how many tyrants after wielding power as if immortal.

Nothing aids moderation more than constantly recalling that life is short and uncertain here. Whatever you are doing, keep the thought of death before you.

Death is the same kind of thing as birth: a mystery of nature, a composition out of certain elements and a decomposition back into them. It is not a thing of which anyone should be ashamed.

Just as it was decided without your consent that you will die one day, so the moment when you might choose to die rests in your own hands. The first is necessity; the second, a privilege.

Soon, very soon, you will be ashes, or a skeleton — and either a name, or not even a name. A name itself is only sound and echo. The things most valued in life are empty, rotten, trifling.

The heart shows its highest divinity when weighing its own death — grasping that man's task is to fulfill his life, that the body is no fixed home but a lodging, to leave behind once the host has had enough.

Moral character at its perfection consists in this: pass every day as if it were your last, never violently excited, never torpid, never playing the hypocrite.

What I call the future is happening now, and much of it has already passed — it is made of our days gone by. We err in dreading only the final day; every day spent is paid out to death.