Marcus Aurelius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Any single activity whatsoever, once it stops at its proper time, suffers no harm simply from having stopped; nor does the one who performed it suffer any harm simply from its having stopped. In the same way, then, the whole made up of all one's actions — which is one's life — if it stops at its proper time, suffers no harm simply from having stopped; nor is the one who brought this chain to a close at its proper time badly off. Nature gives the time and the limit — sometimes one's own nature, when it comes with old age, but in every case the nature of the whole, by whose changing parts the universe as a whole remains ever young and in its prime. And whatever serves the whole is always good and fitting. So the ending of life is, for each person, no evil — since it is not even shameful, being neither a matter of choice nor cut off from the common good — and it is in fact beneficial, arriving right on schedule for the whole, serving the whole, and moving in step with it. For it is in this way that a person is carried by god, moving on the same course as god and toward the same ends in his purpose.