Any Man Who Does Not Think That

An Irreligious Man Is Not One Who Denies The Gods Of The Majority, But One Who Applies To The Gods The Opinions Of The Majority. For What Most Men Say About The Gods Are Not Ideas Derived From Sensation, But False Opinions, According To Which The Greatest Evils Come To The Wicked, And The Greatest Blessings Come To The Good From The Gods.

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.

As If They Were Our Own Handiwork We Place A High Value On Our Characters.

We Begin Every Act Of Choice And Avoidance From Pleasure, And It Is To Pleasure That We Return Using Our Experience Of Pleasure As The Criterion Of Every Good Thing.

Death Is Nothing To Us, Since When We Are, Death Has Not Come, And When Death Has Come, We Are Not.