The rottenness of the matter which is the foundation of everything! water, dust, bones, filth: or again, marble rocks, the callosities of the earth; and gold and silver, the sediments; and garments, only bits of hair; and purple dye, blood; and everything else is of the same kind.
Marcus Aurelius offers a stark, materialist perspective on the composition of all things, reducing them to their base elements.
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The safety of life is this, to examine everything all through, what it is itself, that is its material, what the formal part; with all thy soul to do justice and to say the truth.
There is one light of the sun, though it is interrupted by walls, mountains, and other things infinite.
And how small a part of the whole substance; and how small a part of the universal soul; and on what a small clod of the whole earth thou creepest!
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