Marcus Aurelius: “The universal cause is like a winter torrent: it carries everything along with it.”

And the things which conduce in any way to the commodity of life, and of which fortune gives an abundant supply, he used without arrogance and without excusing himself; so that when he had them, he enjoyed them without affectation, and…

One is that things do not touch the soul, for they are external and remain immovable; but our perturbations come only from the opinion which is within.

It is the same whether we examine these things for a hundred years or three.

How quickly all things disappear,--in the universe the bodies themselves, but in time the remembrance of them.