Quotes About Existence

Every portion of me will be reassigned as another portion of the world, and that in turn transformed into another. Ad infinitum.

Sixth, consider when thou art much vexed or grieved, that man's life is only a moment, and after a short time we are all laid out dead.

everything which belongs to the body is a stream, and what belongs to the soul is a dream

Remember: Matter. How tiny your share of it. Time. How brief and fleeting your allotment of it. Fate. How small a role you play in it.

Close to forgetting it all, close to being forgotten.

Call to mind the whole of Substance of which you have a very small portion, and the whole of time whereof a small hair's breadth has been determined for you, and of the chain of causation whereof you are how small a link.

That way you'll see human life for what it is. Smoke. Nothing. Especially when you recall that once things alter they cease to exist through all the endless years to come. Then why such turmoil?

There is nothing new: all things are both familiar and short-lived.

This world is mere change, and this life, opinion.

It isn't ceasing to live that [I'm] afraid of but never beginning to live properly?

Live as though today is your last day.

Some things are hurrying into existence, and others are hurrying out of it;

A little wisp of soul carrying a corpse."—Epictetus.

You are a spirit, bearing the weight of a dead body, as Epictetus used to say.

We live only in the present, in this fleet-footed moment. The rest is lost and behind us, or ahead of us and may never be found. Little of life we know, little the plot of earth on which we dwell, little the memory of even the most famous who have lived, and this memory itself is preserved by generations of little men, who know little about themselves and far less about those who died long ago. (Book 3, Verse 10)

Consider how quickly all things are dissolved and resolved: the bodies and substances themselves, into the matter and substance of the world: and their memories into the general age and time of the world.

Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see. The span we live is small—small as the corner of the earth in which we live it. Small as even the greatest renown, passed from mouth to mouth by short-lived stick figures, ignorant alike of themselves and those long dead.

Each thing has come into existence for a specific purpose, like a horse or a grapevine. Even the sun would say: "I exist for a purpose," and also the other gods.18 What, then, is your purpose? To feel pleasure? See if the mind will allow such a thought.

And consider this which is near to thee, this boundless abyss of the past and of the future in which all things disappear. How then is he not a fool who is puffed up with such things or plagued about them and makes himself miserable? for they vex him only for a time, and a short time. Think

Were you to live three thousand years, or even thirty thousand, remember that the sole life which a man can lose is that which he is living at the moment; and furthermore, that he can have no other life except the one he loses.

People ask, "Have you ever seen the gods you worship? How can you be sure they exist?" Answers: i. Just look around you. ii. I've never seen my soul either. And yet I revere it. That's how I know the gods exist and why I revere them—from having felt their power, over and over.

Casting therefore all other things aside, keep thyself to these few, and remember withal that no man properly can be said to live more than that which is now present, which is but a moment of time. Whatsoever is besides either is already past, or uncertain.

Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are and to make new things like them. For everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be. But thou art thinking only of seeds which are cast into the earth or into a womb: but this is a very vulgar notion.

Consider the whole universe whereof thou art but a very little part, and the whole age of the world together, whereof but a short and very momentary portion is allotted unto thee, and all the fates and destinies together, of which how much is it that comes to thy part and share.