You must not treat death with scorn, but welcome it as one of nature's gifts. Think of all the changes you accept without question — a boy becoming a young man, growing old, getting teeth or a beard or gray hair, having children, being born or giving birth. Death is just another natural change like these. A wise person doesn't face death with violence or pride, but waits for it patiently as a natural process. You wait eagerly for a child to emerge from the womb. In the same way, you can wait for your soul to drop away from this body that wraps it like skin around an unborn child.
Thou must not in matter of death carry thyself scornfully, but as one that is well pleased with it, as being one of those things that nature hath appointed. For what thou dost conceive of these, of a boy to become a young man, to wax old, to grow, to ripen, to get teeth, or a beard, or grey hairs to beget, to bear, or to be delivered; or what other action soever it be, that is natural unto man according to the several seasons of his life; such a thing is it also to be dissolved. It is therefore the part of a wise man, in matter of death, not in any wise to carry himself either violently, or proudly but patiently to wait for it, as one of nature's operations: that with the same mind as now thou dost expect when that which yet is but an embryo in thy wife's belly shall come forth, thou mayst expect also when thy soul shall fall off from that outward coat or skin: wherein as a child in the belly it lieth involved and shut up.