Marcus Aurelius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
No one is so fortunate that when he dies there will not be some standing by who welcome the misfortune that has befallen them. He was a serious and wise man - won't there be someone in the end saying to himself: at last we can breathe again, free from this schoolmaster? He was harsh with none of us, but I could feel that he silently condemned us. So much for the serious man - yet turning to ourselves, think how many further reasons exist that make plenty of people eager to be rid of us! You will keep this in mind, then, as you die, and you will leave more easily, reasoning: I am departing from a life in which even my own partners, on whose behalf I struggled so hard, prayed, and worried, they themselves want me to go, hoping for some further ease from it. Why then would anyone cling to a longer stay here? Do not, however, for this reason go away any less kindly disposed toward them, but keeping to your own character, friendly and well-meaning and gracious - and not, again, as though being torn away, but as when someone dies an easy death and the little soul is readily released from the body, so too should your departure from these people be. For nature bound you to them and joined you together, but now she unbinds. I am being unbound as from kin, yet not being dragged away resisting, but without compulsion - for this too is one of the things according to nature.