"Epictetus - Letter to Menoeceus" - читать интересную книгу автора (Epictetus)

Accustom yourself to believe that death is nothing to us, for
good and evil imply awareness, and death is the privation of
all awareness; therefore a right understanding that death is
nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by
adding to life an unlimited time, but by taking away the
yearning after immortality. For life has no terror; for those
who thoroughly apprehend that there are no terrors for them in
ceasing to live. Foolish, therefore, is the person who says
that he fears death, not because it will pain when it comes,
but because it pains in the prospect. Whatever causes no
annoyance when it is present, causes only a groundless pain in
the expectation. Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is
nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come,
and, when death is come, we are not. It is nothing, then,
either to the living or to the dead, for with the living it is
not and the dead exist no longer. But in the world, at one
time people shun death as the greatest of all evils, and at
another time choose it as a respite from the evils in life.
The wise person does not deprecate life nor does he fear the
cessation of life. The thought of life is no offense to him,
nor is the cessation of life regarded as an evil. And even as
people choose of food not merely and simply the larger
portion, but the more pleasant, so the wise seek to enjoy the
time which is most pleasant and not merely that which is
longest. And he who admonishes the young to live well and the
old to make a good end speaks foolishly, not merely because of
the desirability of life, but because the same exercise at
once teaches to live well and to die well. Much worse is he
who says that it were good not to be born, but when once one
is born to pass with all speed through the gates of Hades. For
if he truly believes this, why does he not depart from life?
It were easy for him to do so, if once he were firmly
convinced. If he speaks only in mockery, his words are
foolishness, for those who hear believe him not.

We must remember that the future is neither wholly ours nor
wholly not ours, so that neither must we count upon it as
quite certain to come nor despair of it as quite certain not
to come.

We must also reflect that of desires some are natural, others
are groundless; and that of the natural some are necessary as
well as natural, and some natural only. And of the necessary
desires some are necessary if we are to be happy, some if the
body is to be rid of uneasiness, some if we are even to live.
He who has a clear and certain understanding of these things
will direct every preference and aversion toward securing
health of body and tranquillity of mind, seeing that this is
the sum and end of a happy life. For the end of all our
actions is to be free from pain and fear, and, when once we