Cicero: “We must by no means abjure virtue, which secures us affection.”

I don't wish to depreciate life, as many men and good philosophers have often done; nor do I regret having lived, for I have done so in a way that lets me think that I was not born in vain.

But I quit life as I would an inn, not as I would a home.

Again, is there not the fact that the wisest man ever dies with the greatest cheerfulness, the most unwise with the least?

Nay, if some god should grant me to renew my childhood from my present age and once more to be crying in my cradle, I would firmly refuse; nor should I in truth be willing, after having, as it were, run the full course, to be recalled from…