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.

The memory of everything is very soon overwhelmed in time.

What a tiny part of the boundless abyss of time has been allotted to each of us – and this is soon vanished in eternity; what a tiny part of the universal substance and the universal soul; how tiny in the whole earth the mere clod on which you creep.Reflecting on all this, this nothing important other than active pursuit where your own nature leads and passive acceptance of what universal nature brings.

In a moment the earth will cover us all. Then the earth too will change, and then further successive changes to infinity.One reflecting on these waves of change and transformation, and the speed of their flow, will hold all mortal things in contempt.

Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised; and the rememberer and the remembered; and all this in a nook of this part of the world; and not even here do all agree; no not anyone with himself; and the whole earth too is a point.

Live each day as if it be your last.

The passing minute is every man's equal possession but what has once gone by is not ours.

Most of what we say and do is unnecessary: remove the superfluity, and you will have more time and less bother. So in every case one should prompt oneself: 'Is this, or is it not, something necessary?' And the removal of the unnecessary should apply not only to actions but to thoughts also: then no redundant actions either will follow.

How very near us stand the two vast gulfs of time, the past and the future, in which all things disappear.