Meditations III.10

Jettison everything else, then, and lay hold of these things only, few as they are; and remember withal that it is only this present,²⁴ a moment of time, that a man lives: all the rest either has been lived or may never be. Little indeed, then, is a man’s life, and little the nook of earth²⁵ whereon he lives, and little even the longest after-fame, and that too handed on through a succession of manikins, each one of them very soon to be dead, with no knowledge even of themselves, let alone of a man who has died long since.

• 24.See ii. 14.
• 25.See iv. 3, § 3; viii. 21.