Letters 102.23

These delays of mortal existence are a prelude to the longer and better life. As the mother’s womb holds us for ten months, making us ready, not for the womb itself, but for the existence into which we seem to be sent forth when at last we are fitted to draw breath and live in the open; just so, throughout the years extending between infancy and old age, we are making ourselves ready for another birth. A different beginning, a different condition, await us.

Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 102.23, translated by Richard Mott Gummere