Marcus Aurelius — "A man's worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions."

"Frightened of change? But what can exist without it? What's closer to nature's heart? Can you take a hot bath and leave the firewood as it was? Eat food without transforming it? How can any action be …"

"Because your life is not a series of unconnected periods, but a single, continuous stream, it is only in the present that you truly live."

"Everything is ephemeral, both that which remembers and that which is remembered."

"When you have done a good deed and another has received it, why do you still ask for a third thing, as fools do, namely, that you may be thought to have done a good deed or that you may be rewarded?"

"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 existing things and to make new things like…"