Remember that man lives only in the present, in this fleeting instant; all the rest of his life is either past and gone, or not yet revealed. Short, therefore, is man's life, and narrow is the corner of the earth wherein he dwells.

How very near us stand the two vast gulfs of time, the past and the future, in which all things disappear.

You will find rest from vain fancies if you perform every act in life as though it were your last.

All is ephemeral--fame and the famous as well.

Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see. The span we live is small - small as the corner of the earth in which we live it. Small as the greatest renown, passed from mouth to mouth by short-lived stick figures, ignorant alike of themselves and those long dead.

He who has a vehement desire for posthumous fame does not consider that every one of those who remember him will himself also die very soon.

You will give yourself relief, if you do every act of your life as if it were the last.

Mark how fleeting and paltry is the estate of man—yesterday in embryo, tomorrow a mummy or ashes. So for the hairsbreadth of time assigned to thee, live rationally, and part with life cheerfully, as drops the ripe olive, extolling the season that bore it and the tree that matured it.

Be not as one that hath ten thousand years to live death is nigh at hand while thou livest, while thou hast time, be good.

Just as the sand-dunes, heaped one upon another, hide each the first, so in life the former deeds are quickly hidden by those that follow after.

Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.

When you're young, you think everything you do is disposable. You move from now to now, crumpling time up in your hands, tossing it away. You're your own speeding car. You think you can get rid of things, and people too--leave them behind. You don't yet know about the habit they have, of coming back.