Cicero says that to philosophize is nothing other than to prepare oneself for death. That is because study and contemplation draw our soul out of us in a certain way, and set it apart from the body, which is a kind of rehearsal for death, so alike does it resemble it. Or else it is that we should order the right use of our soul and of our dwelling according to that final end, and prepare ourselves in advance for the moment when death will tear us from our body. When someone asked Socrates what kind of life was best, he answered: 'The one that owes an accounting neither to gods nor to men.' Indeed, he who has learned to die has shaken off all servitude. There is nothing bad for the man who has thoroughly learned not to fear dying. Death threatens the man who flees just as much as the man who stands still. On the one hand, death should be somewhat feared; on the other, somewhat desired; it is right to grant it neither too much nor too little consideration. If you know how to live, you must also learn to die. Life would be an unbearable and monstrous thing if it had no end. It takes more judgment to die than to live; and it is easier to be rid of life than of one's fears, easier to suffer death than to suffer life. Let us watch how men die: that is what I call the very point and summit of wisdom. All the precepts that concern the conditions of life converge toward that goal. I believe the good counsels we are given for despising pain, shame, poverty and things of that kind all take their source from there, where we are shown that a man is blessed when his character and his freedom of mind are upright and whole; and that uprightness is not one that has not faced death. I want death to find me planting my cabbages, but indifferent to it, and still more indifferent to my unfinished garden. I have always seen that men, when they come to die, strive to fix their gaze on something that will console them, and turn as best they can toward that side. All the ways of consoling them reduce to this: that we must part from this life, in which we take pleasure; and second, to the train of human miseries that those who survive us will have to endure. Because it is hard to conquer the first consideration entirely, men have blended it with the second. Death can be made serene and even desired: 'I am going where my father and my forefathers are.' And that old Eastern sage who ordered his death to be accompanied by a feast and general congratulation among all his friends, who were, he said, going to join him on the other side, took his leave joyfully on that hope. We stir ourselves with such words as these: 'Why weep over death, since it is the beginning of an eternal and blessed life?' Nothing, then, matters more to a wise man than to know well how to die. It displays a greater capacity, to weigh what one loses in death and to reckon it aright. He who has learned to live well has also learned to die well: that is an excellent art. One must learn to die in order to begin to live; the men whom death catches unprepared are those who never knew how to live. Though you occupy the highest place, a great personage full of glory and riches, death will strip you of everything. Ask yourself then: what do you want? Death may be good at every age; but in youth it is sweet and does not press so hard. Live at your ease, and see to it that death does not find you in the midst of your complaints. I marvel at that gentleness and ease with which, in our histories, so many brave men have met their end. One of them, asked how he did, answered: 'I have a fever, and a death.' I wonder whether the occasion of death is ever a bad one. The finest lives are not always the longest: it is the measure, not the number of years, that we must count. What longer life could we desire than a life well spent? The point is not to die, but to die well; and to die is, in a sense, already to have lived. For my part, I want death to find me busy with public and private affairs, in the fullness of my task, but as far as I can, prompt and ready.