You want to live – but do you know how to live? You are scared of dying – and, tell me, is the kind of life you lead really any different from being dead? Caligula was once passing a column of captives on the Latin Road when one of them, with a hoary old beard reaching down his breast, begged to be put to death. „So,‟ replied Caligula, „you are alive, then, as you are?‟ That is the answer to give to people to whom death would actually come as a release. „You are scared of dying? So you are alive, then, as you are?‟
— Seneca the Younger, Letters from a Stoic, LETTER LXXVII