A man should remove not only unnecessary acts, but also unnecessary thoughts, for then superfluous activity will not follow.

Past and future have no power over you. Just the present - and even that can be minimized.

And yet, after all, what is posthumous fame? Altogether vanity.

Look at everything that exists, and observe that it is already in dissolution and in change, and as it were putrefaction or dispersion, or that everything is so constituted by nature as to die.

Reflect often upon the rapidity with which all existing things, or things coming into existence, sweep past us and are carried away.

In the end, what would you gain from everlasting remembrance? Absolutely nothing. So what is left worth living for? This alone: justice in thought, goodness in action, speech that cannot deceive, and a disposition glad of whatever comes, welcoming it as necessary, as familiar, as flowing from the same source and fountain as yourself.

Thou seest how few be the things, the which if a man has at his command his life flows gently on and is divine.