双语有声阅读：谈怕死

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Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end.There was a time when we were not: this gives me no concern-why then should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be? I have no wish to have been alive a hundred years ago, or in the reign¹ of Queen Anne. Why should I regret and lay it so much to heart that I shall not be alive a hundred years hence, in the reign of I cannot tell whom?

 

To die is only to be as we were born; yet no one feels any remorse², or regret, or repugnance³, in contemplating⁴ this last idea. It is rather a relief and disburdening of the mind; it seems to have been a holiday time with us then; we were not called to appear upon the stage of life, to wear robes or tatters, to laugh or cry, be hooted⁵ or applauded; we had lain perdu all this while, snug⁶ out of harm’s way; and had slept out our thousands of centuries without wanting to be waked up; at peace and free from care, in a long nonage, in a sleep deeper and calmer than that of infancy⁷, wrapped in the softest and finest dust. And the worst that we dread⁸ is, after a short fretful, feverish⁹ being, after vain hopes, and idle fears, to sink to final repose¹⁰ again, and forget the troubled dream of life!

 

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