But yet this also shalt thou generally perceive, if thou dost
diligently take heed, that whatsoever doth happen to any one man
or men. . . . And now I am content that the word expedient,
should more generally be understood of those things which we
otherwise call middle things, or things indifferent;
as health, wealth, and the like.

XLI. As the ordinary shows of the theatre and of other
such places, when thou art presented with them, affect thee;
as the same things still seen, and in the same fashion,
make the sight ingrateful and tedious; so must all the things
that we see all our life long affect us. For all things,
above and below, are still the same, and from the same causes.
When then will there be an end?

XLII. Let the several deaths of men of all sorts, and of all
sorts of professions, and of all sort of nations, be a perpetual
object of thy thoughts, . . . so that thou mayst even come down
to Philistio, Phoebus, and Origanion. Pass now to other generations.
Thither shall we after many changes, where so many brave orators are;
where so many grave philosophers; Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Socrates.
Where so many heroes of the old times; and then so many brave
captains of the latter times; and so many kings. After all these,
where Eudoxus, Hipparchus, Archimedes; where so many other sharp,
generous, industrious, subtile, peremptory dispositions;
and among others, even they, that have been the greatest scoffers
and deriders of the frailty and brevity of this our human life;
as Menippus, and others, as many as there have been such as he.
Of all these consider, that they long since are all dead, and gone.
And what do they suffer by it! Nay they that have not so much