Book XI · Chapter 34

When a man kisses his child, said Epictetus, he should whisper to himself, "To-morrow perchance thou wilt die."--But those are words of bad omen.--"No word is a word of bad omen," said Epictetus, "which expresses any work of nature; or if it is so, it is also a word of bad omen to speak of the ears of corn being reaped" (Epictetus, iii. 24, 88).