Cicero: “Hours indeed, and days and months and years depart, nor does past time ever return, nor can the future be known.”

Don't you think that the soul which has the clearer and longer sight sees that it is starting for better things, while the soul whose vision is dimmer does not see it?

I don't wish to depreciate life, as many men and good philosophers have often done; nor do I regret having lived, for I have done so in a way that lets me think that I was not born in vain.

Again, is there not the fact that the wisest man ever dies with the greatest cheerfulness, the most unwise with the least?

But my soul, I know not how, refusing to be kept down, ever fixed its eyes upon future ages, as though from a conviction that it would begin to live only when it had left the body.