Letters 93.10

“And yet,” says the wise man, “I do not depart more valiantly because of this hope—because I judge the path lies clear before me to my own gods. I have indeed earned admission to their presence, and in fact have already been in their company; I have sent my soul to them as they had previously sent theirs to me. But suppose that I am utterly annihilated, and that after death nothing mortal remains; I have no less courage, even if, when I depart, my course leads—nowhere.”

“But,” you say, “he has not lived as many years as he might have lived.”

Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 93.10, translated by Richard Mott Gummere