Letter 22 — On the Futility of Half-way Measures (§14)

“The words are: “Everyone goes out of life just as if he had but lately entered it.” Take anyone off his guard,—young, old, or middle-aged; you will find that all are equally afraid of death, and equally ignorant of life. No one has anything finished, because we have kept putting off into the future all our undertakings. No thought in the quotation given above pleases me more than that it taunts old men with being infants.”