If God listened to the prayers of men, all men would quickly have perished: for they are forever praying for evil against one another.

Death is meaningless to the living because they are living, and meaningless to the dead… because they are dead.

We must consider both the ultimate end and all clear sensory evidence, to which we refer our opinions; for otherwise everything will be full of uncertainty and confusion.

Whatsoever 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.

Why should I fear death? If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not. Why should I fear that which can only exist when I do not?

Death is nothing to us: for after our bodies have been dissolved by death they are without sensation, and that which lacks sensation is nothing to us. And therefore a right understanding of death makes mortality enjoyable, not because it adds to an infinite span of time, but because it takes away the craving for immortality.

A free life cannot acquire many possessions, because this is not easy to do without servility to mobs or monarchs.