Men despise one another and flatter one another; and men wish to raise themselves above one another, and crouch before one another.

If souls continue to exist, how does the air contain them from eternity?

For a man can lose neither the past nor the future; for how can one take from him that which is not his? So remember these two points: first, that each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle, and that it signifies not whether a man shall look upon the same things for a hundred years or two hundred, or for an infinity of time; second, that the longest lived and the shortest lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing.

Think of the country mouse and of the town mouse, and of the alarm and trepidation of the town mouse.

Take away the complaint, 'I have been harmed,' and the harm is taken away.

Why do you hunger for length of days? The point of life is to follow reason and the divine spirit and to accept whatever nature sends you. To live in this way is not to fear death, but to hold it in contempt. Death is only a thing of terror for those unable to live in the present. Pass on your way, then, with a smiling face, under the smile of him who bids you go

Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else.