Those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord
preparing themselves for death and dying...

Other people are likely not to be aware that those who pursue philosophy aright study nothing but dying and being dead. Now if this is true, it would be absurd to be eager for nothing but this all their lives, and then to be troubled when that came for which they had all along been eagerly practicing.

To philosophise is to learn how to die.

...is not all philosophy but preparation for a serene dying?

Plato says the purpose of philosophy is to teach us how to die.

For the whole life of a philosopher is, as the same philosopher says, a meditation on death.

The average person has the most fear of death and in reality thinks most rarely about it. The most prominent one occupies himself with it most persistently, but nevertheless fears it the least. The one lives blindly day to day, sinning away, only to sink down before the grim reaper. The other carefully observes his approach but then looks him in the eye, calm and composed.

Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die.

To philosophize is to learn to die – philosophizing is a soaring up to the Godhead – the knowledge of Being as Being.

from “Philosophy and Science”, <i>World Review Magazine</i> (March 1950)

"To begin depriving death of its greatest advantage over us, let us adopt a way clean contrary to that common one; let us deprive death of its strangeness, let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death... We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere."

"To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave."

Montaigne: “To practice death is to practice freedom.71 A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.” Being a slave to our job and our status in the world makes it much harder to put our day behind us and surrender to sleep.

I am not the least afraid to die

Everyone knows they're going to die, but nobody believes it.... So we kid ourselves about death.... But there's a better approach. To know you're going to dies, and to be prepared for it at any time....Do what the Buddhists do...ask, Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be?

Here in the world, each human frailty Provides occasion for philosophy, And that is virtue's noblest exercise;