“Pass then through this little space of time conformably to nature, and end thy journey in content, as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew.”
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know of a certainty, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.”
— Plato, Apology
“The perfection of moral character consists in this, in passing every day as the last, and in being neither violently excited nor torpid nor playing the hypocrite.”
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“Let us cherish and love old age; for it is full of pleasure if one knows how to use it.”
— Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius
“Though thou shouldest be going to live three thousand years and as many times ten thousand years, still remember that no man loses any other life than this which he now lives, nor lives any other than this which he now loses.”
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways—I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.”
— Plato, Apology
“Nothing, Lucilius, is ours, except time. We were entrusted by nature with the ownership of this single thing, so fleeting and slippery that anyone who will can oust us from possession.”
— Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius
“Time is like a river made up of the events which happen, and a violent stream; for as soon as a thing has been seen, it is carried away, and another comes in its place, and this will be carried away too.”
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“That man is happiest, and is secure in his own possession of himself, who can await the morrow without apprehension. When a man has said: “I have lived!”, every morning he arises he receives a bonus.”
— Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius
“hold every hour in your grasp. Lay hold of to-day’s task, and you will not need to depend so much upon to-morrow’s. While we are postponing, life speeds by.”
— Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius
“And thou wilt give thyself relief if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last, laying aside all carelessness and passionate aversion from the commands of reason, and all hypocrisy, and self-love, and discontent with the portion which has been given to thee.”
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“Men are disturbed not by the things which happen, but by the opinions about the things; for example, death is nothing terrible, for if it were it would have seemed so to Socrates; for the opinion about death that it is terrible, is the terrible thing.”
— Epictetus, Enchiridion
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