Letter 104 — On Care of Health and Peace of Mind (§3)

“For one must indulge genuine emotions; sometimes, even in spite of weighty reasons, the breath of life must be called back and kept at our very lips even at the price of great suffering, for the sake of those whom we hold dear; because the good man should not live as long as it pleases him, but as long as he ought. He who does not value his wife, or his friend, highly enough to linger longer in life—he who obstinately persists in dying—is a voluptuary. The soul should also enforce this command upon itself whenever the needs of one’s relatives require; it should pause and humour those near and dear, not only when it desires, but even when it has begun, to die.”