Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.

Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus (270 BC)

Genuine

Yes. In a letter to Menoeceus, section 125 (Diogenes Laertius, Lives X.125); Hicks translation, 1925.

Found word for word by program in the Greek original and in R. D. Hicks’ English translation (1925).

Work
Letter to Menoeceus (Ἐπιστολὴ πρὸς Μενοικέα)
Where
Letter to Menoeceus, section 125 (Diogenes Laertius, Lives X.125); Hicks translation, 1925
Found at
Paragraph 6 of the Greek text, 4 of the English
Translation
R. D. Hicks, 1925

Researched by AI; checked by program against the full text on 31 October 2026. Editorial review: pending. How we check

On the page

¶3 en¶5 el

[…] For the utterances of the multitude about the gods are not true preconceptions but false assumptions; hence it is that the greatest evils happen to the wicked and the greatest blessings happen to the good from the hand of the gods, seeing that they are always favourable to their own good qualities and take pleasure in men like unto themselves, but reject as alien whatever is not of their kind.

“Συνέθιζε δὲ ἐν τῷ νομίζειν μηδὲν πρὸς ἡμᾶς εἶναι τὸν θάνατον· ἐπεὶ πᾶν ἀγαθὸν καὶ κακὸν ἐν αἰσθήσει· στέρησις δέ ἐστιν αἰσθήσεως ὁ θάνατος. ὅθεν γνῶσις ὀρθὴ τοῦ μηθὲν εἶναι πρὸς ἡμᾶς τὸν θάνατον ἀπολαυστὸν ποιεῖ τὸ τῆς ζωῆς θνητόν, οὐκ ἄπειρον προστιθεῖσα χρόνον ἀλλὰ τὸν τῆς ἀθανασίας ἀφελομένη πόθον.

¶4 en¶6 el
English, R. D. Hicks, 1925

[…] For life has no terrors for him who has thoroughly apprehended that there are no terrors for him in ceasing to live. Foolish, therefore, is the man who says that he fears death, not because it will pain when it comes, but because it pains in the prospect. Whatsoever causes no annoyance when it is present, causes only a groundless pain in the expectation. Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not. It is nothing, then, either to the living or to the dead, for with the living it is not and the dead exist no longer. But in the world, at one time men shun death as the greatest of all evils, and at another time choose it as a respite from the evils in life. […]

Greek, the original

οὐθὲν γάρ ἐστιν ἐν τῷ ζῆν δεινὸν τῷ κατειληφότι γνησίως τὸ μηθὲν ὑπάρχειν ἐν τῷ μὴ ζῆν δεινόν. ὥστε μάταιος ὁ λέγων δεδιέναι τὸν θάνατον οὐχ ὅτι λυπήσει παρών, ἀλλʼ ὅτι λυπεῖ μέλλων. ὃ γὰρ παρὸν οὐκ ἐνοχλεῖ, προσδοκώμενον κενῶς λυπεῖ. τὸ φρικωδέστατον οὖν τῶν κακῶν ὁ θάνατος οὐθὲν πρὸς ἡμᾶς, ἐπειδή περ ὅταν μὲν ἡμεῖς ὦμεν, ὁ θάνατος οὐ πάρεστιν· ὅταν δʼ ὁ θάνατος παρῇ, τόθʼ ἡμεῖς οὐκ ἐσμέν. οὔτε οὖν πρὸς τοὺς ζῶντάς ἐστιν οὔτε πρὸς τοὺς τετελευτηκότας, ἐπειδήπερ περὶ οὓς μὲν οὐκ ἔστιν, οἱ δʼ οὐκέτι εἰσίν. ἀλλʼ οἱ πολλοὶ τὸν θάνατον ὁτὲ μὲν ὡς μέγιστον τῶν κακῶν φεύγουσιν, ὁτὲ δὲ ὡς ἀνάπαυσιν τῶν ἐν τῷ ζῆν 〈κακῶ αἱροῦνται.

¶5 en¶7 el

“We must remember that the future is neither wholly ours nor wholly not ours, so that neither must we count upon it as quite certain to come nor despair of it as quite certain not to come.

ὁ δὲ σοφὸς οὔτε παραιτεῖται τὸ ζῆν〉 οὔτε φοβεῖται τὸ μὴ ζῆν· οὔτε γὰρ αὐτῷ προσίσταται τὸ ζῆν οὔτε δοξάζεται κακὸν εἶναι τὸ μὴ ζῆν. ὥσπερ δὲ τὸ σιτίον οὐ τὸ πλεῖον πάντως ἀλλὰ τὸ ἥδιστον αἱρεῖται, οὕτω καὶ χρόνον οὐ τὸν μήκιστον ἀλλὰ τὸν ἥδιστον καρπίζεται. ὁ δὲ παραγγέλλων τὸν μὲν νέον καλῶς ζῆν, τὸν δὲ γέροντα καλῶς καταστρέφειν εὐήθης ἐστὶν οὐ μόνον διὰ τὸ τῆς ζωῆς ἀσπαστόν, ἀλλὰ καὶ διὰ τὸ τὴν αὐτὴν εἶναι μελέτην τοῦ καλῶς ζῆν καὶ τοῦ καλῶς ἀποθνήσκειν. πολὺ δὲ χεῖρον καὶ ὁ λέγων, καλὸν μὲν μὴ φῦναι, φύντα δʼ ὅπως ὤκιστα πύλας Ἀΐδαο περῆσαι.

¶6 en¶8 el

“We must also reflect that of desires some are natural, others are groundless; and that of the natural some are necessary as well as natural, and some natural only. […]

εἰ μὲν γὰρ πεποιθὼς τοῦτό φησι, πῶς οὐκ ἀπέρχεται τοῦ ζῆν; ἐν ἑτοίμῳ γὰρ αὐτῷ τοῦτʼ ἔστιν, εἴπερ ἦν βεβουλευμένον αὐτῷ βεβαίως· εἰ δὲ μωκώμενος, μάταιος ἐν τοῖς οὐκ ἐπιδεχομένοις.

The scene

In the letter that sums up his ethics, Epicurus moves from the gods to death. He has just told Menoeceus to accustom himself to believing that death is nothing to us, since good and evil lie in sensation and death is the loss of all sensation; fearing death in advance, he says, is a groundless pain. This sentence gives the reason in its shortest form, and the letter goes on: death is nothing to the living or to the dead, so the wise man neither scorns life nor fears its end.

What it means

We never meet our own death: while we exist it is absent, and when it is present we no longer exist to suffer it. So the fear of being dead is a fear of nothing.

Often misread

Often shared as a shrug that death does not matter, or as a denial of grief. The argument is narrower: it is about the fear of one’s own death, resting on Epicurus’ view that the soul is made of atoms and that sensation ends with the body. It says nothing against mourning others, and the letter uses it to make mortal life enjoyable, not to make light of it.

Also shared as

  • ShortenedDeath is nothing to us. The short form, which Epicurus also gives as the second of his Principal Doctrines (“Death is nothing to us; for the body, when it has been resolved into its elements, has no feeling, and that which has no feeling is nothing to us”, Hicks, X.139), and which Lucretius put into Latin (De rerum natura III.830).

Before and after

Epicurus-270, this quote
LucretiusLucretius renders the maxim in Latin and argues for it at length: “Nil igitur mors est ad nos neque pertinet hilum”. Entry

Topics

Death, Reason, Wisdom

Related quotes

Sources

Cite it

Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus (270 BC), Letter to Menoeceus, section 125 (Diogenes Laertius, Lives X.125); Hicks translation, 1925, translated by R. D. Hicks (1925). Checked at Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/death-the-most-awful-of-evils-is-nothing-to-us/ (31 October 2026).

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