To-day man is, and to-morrow he will be seen no more. And being removed out of sight, quickly also he is out of mind. O the dulness and hardness of man's heart, which thinketh only of the present, and looketh not forward to the future. Thou oughtest in every deed and thought so to order thyself, as if thou wert to die this day.

It is vanity, too, to covet honours, and to lift up ourselves on high...It is vanity, to love that which quickly passeth away and not to hasten where eternal joy abideth

If you gave more frequent thought to your death than to a long life, you would unquestionably be more eager to amend your life.

In the morning consider that you may not live till evening, and when evening comes do not dare to promise yourself the dawn.

It is vanity to desire a long life, and to have little care for a good life.

If you take on too much, your overcommitted schedules will become monsters that interfere with my agenda for you.

It is vanity to wish for a long life and to care little about a well-spent life.

For each human being, time is a necessary resource. It can neither be ignored nor changed.

Those things which seem to take meaning away from human life include not only suffering but dying as well. I never tire of saying that the only really transitory aspects of life are the potentialities; but as soon as they are actualized, they are rendered realities at that very moment; they are saved and delivered into the past, wherein they are rescued and preserved from transitoriness. For, in the past, nothing is irretrievably lost but everything irrevocably stored.

If we were immortal, we could legitimately postpone every action forever. [...] But in the face of death as absolute finis to our future and boundary to our possibilities, we are under the imperative of utilizing our lifetimes to the utmost, not letting the singular opportunities - whose finite sum constitutes the whole of life - pass by unused.

To be sure, people tend to see only the stubble fields of transitoriness but overlook and forget the full granaries of the past into which they have brought the harvest of their lives: the deeds done, the loves loved, and last but not least, the sufferings they have gone through with courage and dignity.

The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back.