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 any one with himself: and the whole earth too is a point.
In his private journal, he contemplates the fleeting nature of human existence and reputation.
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What remains, except to enjoy life by joining one good thing to another so as not to leave even the smallest intervals between?
There is one light of the sun, though it is interrupted by walls, mountains, and other things infinite.
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.
How small a part of the boundless and unfathomable time is assigned to every man, for it is very soon swallowed up in the eternal!
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