This is moral perfection: to live each day as though it were the last;
to be tranquil, sincere, yet not indifferent to one's fate. (Book
vii., § 69.)


THE BREVITY OF LIFE

Cast from thee all other things and hold fast to a few precepts such as
these: forget not that every man's real life is but the present
moment,--an indivisible point of time,--and that all the rest of his
life hath either passed away or is uncertain. Short, then, the time that
any man may live; and small the earthly niche wherein he hath his home;
and short is longest fame,--a whisper passed from race to race of dying
men, ignorant concerning themselves, and much less really knowing thee,
who died so long ago. (Book iii., § 10.)


VANITY OF LIFE

Many are the doctors who have knit their brows over their patients and
now are dead themselves; many are the astrologers who in their day
esteemed themselves renowned in foretelling the death of others, yet now
they too are dead. Many are the philosophers who have held countless
discussions upon death and immortality, and yet themselves have shared
the common lot; many the valiant warriors who have slain their thousands
and yet have themselves been slain by Death; many are the rulers and the
kings of the earth, who, in their arrogance, have exercised over others
the power of life or death as though they were themselves beyond the
hazard of Fate, and yet themselves have, in their turn, felt Death's