Memento mori, the Romans would remind themselves. Remember you are mortal.

Nothing mortal can last. At best it can leave legends that can bear fruit in later ages.”

Often think of the rapidity with which things pass by and disappear…For substance is like a river in continual flow, and the activities of things are in constant change, and the causes work in infinite varieties; and there is hardly anything which stands still. And consider this which is near to thee, this boundless abyss of the past and of the fut

People once made glass sculptures of decay, and they put these sculptures in museums. How strange and beautiful human beings are. And how fragile.