56. Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what's left and live it properly

All those people who came into the world with me and have already left it.

Come tutte le cose rapidamente svaniscano, nel cosmo i corpi stessi, nel tempo il loro ricordo;

We too will inevitably end up where so many eloquent orators have gone, so many distinguished philosophers (Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Socrates), so many heroes of old, and so many generals and tyrants

Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see.

To comprehend all in a few words, our life is short; we must endeavour to gain the present time with best discretion and justice. Use recreation with sobriety.

In this infinity then what is the difference between him who lives three days and him who lives three generations? Always

Before long, either ashes or a skeleton, and either just a name or not even that

Consider each individual thing you do and ask yourself whether to lose it through death makes death itself any cause for fear.

For the whole earth is a point, and how small a nook in it is this thy dwelling, and how few are there in it, and what kind of people are they who will praise thee. This then remains: Remember to retire into this little territory of thy own, and above all do not distract or strain thyself, but be free, and look at things as a man, as a human being, as a citizen, as a mortal.

That men of a certain type should behave as they do is inevitable. To wish it otherwise were to wish the fig-tree would not yield its juice. In any case, remember that in a very little while both you and he will be dead, and your very names will quickly be forgotten.

How quickly all things disappear, in the universe the bodies themselves, but in time the remembrance of them; what is the nature of all sensible things, and particularly those which attract with the bait of pleasure or terrify by pain, or are noised abroad by vapoury fame; how worthless, and contemptible, and sordid, and perishable, and dead they are—all this it is the part of the intellectual faculty to observe. To