To a longer and worse life, a shorter and better is by all means to be preferred.

If you wish to write, write.

Don't seek to have events happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do happen, and all will be well with you.

Why, do you not know, then, that the origin of all human evils, and of baseness, and cowardice, is not death, but rather the fear of death?

In a word, neither death, nor exile, nor pain, nor anything of this kind is the real cause of our doing or not doing any action, but our inward opinions and principles.

We are not disturbed by what happens to us, but by our thoughts about what happens to us.

It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death.