"Don't let yourself forget how many doctors have died, furrowing their brows over how many deathbeds.
How many astrologers after pompous forecasts about other's ends.
How many philosophers, after endless disquisitions on death and immortality
How many warriors, after inflicting thousands of casualties themselves.
How many tyrants, after abusing the power of life and death atrociously, as if they themselves were immortal.
How many whole cities have met their end: Helike, Pompeii, Herculaneum, and countless others.
And all the ones you know yourself, one after another.
One who laid out another for burial, and was buried himself, and the man who buried him - all in the same short space of time.
Yesterday a blob of semen; tomorrow embalming fluid, ash.
To pass through this brief life as nature demands.
To give it up without complaint.
Like an olive that ripens and falls.
Praising its mother, thanking the tree it grew on." - Marcus Aurelius
