Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

"And the things that I continually urged upon you, these both practice and meditate upon, understanding that these are the elements of living well. First, considering God to be an imperishable and blessed living being, as the common conception of God is outlined, attach to him nothing alien to imperishability or unsuited to blessedness; and believe concerning him everything capable of preserving his blessedness together with imperishability. For gods do indeed exist; knowledge of them is self-evident. But they are not such as the multitude consider them to be; for they do not preserve them as they conceive them. And the impious person is not the one who denies the gods of the multitude, but the one who attaches the opinions of the multitude to the gods.

​For the pronouncements of the multitude concerning the gods are not basic preconceptions, but false suppositions; whence the greatest harms are brought from the gods upon the bad and the greatest benefits upon the good. For being always at home with their own virtues, they accept those who are like themselves, regarding everything that is not of this kind as alien. "Become accustomed to the belief that death is nothing to us, since all good and evil consists in sensation, and death is the deprivation of sensation. Hence a correct knowledge that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding infinite time, but by taking away the yearning for immortality.

​For there is nothing terrible in life for the one who has genuinely grasped that there is nothing terrible in not living. So that foolish is the one who says he fears death, not because it will cause pain when present, but because it causes pain when it is about to come. For that which causes no trouble when present causes pain only in vain when anticipated. Death, therefore, the most dreadful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that when we exist, death is not present; and when death is present, then we do not exist. It is therefore relevant neither to the living nor to those who have died, seeing that concerning the former it is not, and the latter no longer exist. But the multitude at one time flee death as the greatest of evils, and at another time choose it as a respite from the evils in life.

​The wise person neither declines life nor fears not living; for neither is living distasteful to him, nor is not living believed to be an evil. And just as with food he does not always choose the larger portion, but the most pleasant, so with time he enjoys not the longest duration, but the most pleasant. And the one who advises the young person to live well and the old person to make a good end is simple-minded, not only on account of life's desirability, but also because the meditation upon living well and upon dying well is the very same. Far worse is the one who says that it is well not to have been born, 'but once born, as quickly as possible to pass the gates of Hades.'

​For if he says this out of conviction, why does he not depart from life? For this is ready at hand for him, if indeed it has been firmly resolved by him. But if he says it in mockery, he is foolish in matters that do not admit of it. "We must also remember that the future is neither ours nor wholly not ours, so that we may neither await it with certainty as bound to be, nor despair of it as bound not to be. "We must also calculate that of desires, some are natural, while others are empty; and of the natural, some are necessary, while others are merely natural; and of the necessary, some are necessary for happiness, others for the body's freedom from disturbance, and others for life itself.