Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to throw away. Death stands at your elbow. Be good for something while you live and it is in your power.

Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretence.

Soon you will have forgotten all things: soon all things will have forgotten you.

All things fade and quickly turn to myth: quickly too utter oblivion drowns them. And I am talking of those who shone with some wonderful brilliance: the rest, once they have breathed their last, are immediately ‘beyond sigh, beyond knowledge’. But what in any case is everlasting memory? Utter emptiness.

It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.

Death smiles at us all; all we can do is smile back.

That which has died falls not out of the universe. If it stays here, it also changes here, and is dissolved into its proper parts, which are elements of the universe and of thyself. And these too change, and they murmur not".

There is no man so blessed that some who stand by his deathbed won't hail the occasion with delight.

We must make haste then, not only because we are daily nearer to death, but also because the conception of things and the understanding of them cease first.