Marcus Aurelius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Do not despise death, but be well pleased with it, since this too is one of the things nature wills. For as it is to be young and to grow old, to increase and to reach one's prime, to cut new teeth, to sprout a beard, to turn gray, to father children and carry a child and bring it forth, and all the other natural workings that the seasons of life bring, such too is being dissolved. This, then, is the reasoning proper to a thoughtful man: not to hold himself toward death recklessly, nor violently, nor with contempt, but to wait for it as one of the natural operations — and just as you now wait for the hour when the infant will come out of your wife's womb, so await the hour in which your little soul will fall out of this husk. But if you want an ordinary rule that touches the heart directly, nothing will make you readier for death than attention to the very things from which you are about to be parted, and to the thought that you will no longer be entangled with their characters. You must not be offended at them at all — rather you must care for them and bear with them gently — remembering, however, that your release will not be from men who share your convictions. For this alone, if anything, would have pulled you back and held you fast in life: if it were granted to live together with those who held the same beliefs. But as it is, you see how great the weariness is in the discord of living together, so that you might say: 'Come quickly, death, lest I too forget myself.'