Accustom yourself to thinking that death is nothing to us, since every good and evil lies in perception, while death is the deprivation of perception…. Something that causes no trouble when it is present causes pain to no purpose when it is merely expected. Death, the most horrible of evils, is therefore nothing to us – since so long as we exist, death is not present, and when death is present, we do not exist. Epicurus, Letter to Menœceus
