Death is nothing to us

from On the Nature of Things · tr. William Ellery Leonard (1916)

Book III

Death, then, is nothing to us, nor concerns us one jot, since the nature of the mind is proved to be mortal. And as in time gone by we felt no ill, when from all quarters the Carthaginians came to the shock of battle, so, when we shall no longer be, there can be nothing at all to move our sense.

Book III

Look back also on the eternity of time that was before we were born, and mark how it is nothing to us. This is a mirror which nature holds up to us of the time to come after our death. Is there anything there that looks terrible? anything that seems gloomy? Is it not more untroubled than any sleep?

This text is one of the sources behind Lucretius, one of the voices you can reflect with.

All chapters in On the Nature of Things

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