Letters 54.2

I have passed through all the ills and dangers of the flesh; but nothing seems to me more troublesome than this. And naturally so; for anything else may be called illness; but this is a sort of continued “last gasp.” Hence physicians call it “practising how to die.” For some day the breath will succeed in doing what it has so often essayed.

Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 54.2, translated by Richard Mott Gummere