At day's first light have in readiness, against disinclination to leave your bed, the thought that "I am rising for the work of man."

In man's life, time is but a moment; being, a flux; sense is dim; the material frame corruptible; soul, an eddy of breath; fortune a thing inscrutable, and fame precarious.

Keep in mind how fast things pass by and are gone - those that are now, and those to come. Existence flows past us like a river; the "what" is in constant flux, the "why" has a thousand variations. Nothing is stable, not even what's right here. The infinity of past and future gapes before us - a chasm whose depths we cannot see.

No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be emerald, my color undiminished.

The soul is dyed by the thoughts. Dye it then, with a continuous series of such thoughts as these - that where a man can live, there - if he will - he can also live well.

Observe constantly that all things take place by change.

The world is nothing but change, our life is only perception.