The Theban Plays by Sophocles1986

Chorus:
A man who is desperate for long life and will willingly prolong his grief for more than a man's span of years is a fool to his last breath. For what does old age bring but biting pains and bitter tears and pleasures few and decreased? Later or sooner, the same death, not with marriage songs but funeral weeping, delivers us all to the earth. Not to be born is best. Or being born to waste no time in lingering, but return to the dark: our beginning and end. Youth soon passes like a carnival of frivolity. Horror and pain follow behind realities bleak and inescapable. Greed, envy, rapine, civil war and carnage: old age only increases the torment. Short of friends and breath, you struggle on towards the last crisis.