Short then is the time which every man lives; and small the nook of the earth where he lives; and short too the longest posthumous fame, and even this only continued by a succession of poor human beings, who will very soon die, and who know not even themselves, much less him who died long ago.
Marcus Aurelius meditates on the fleeting nature of human life, the smallness of one's place, and the impermanence of posthumous fame.
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There is one light of the sun, though it is interrupted by walls, mountains, and other things infinite.
But it is inconsistent with honoring reason and God to be troubled because by death a man will be deprived of the other things.
What remains, except to enjoy life by joining one good thing to another so as not to leave even the smallest intervals between?
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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