"So, you are alive, then, as you are?"

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?”

–Seneca in Letters from a Stoic (Penguin Classics)