How quickly all things disappear, in the universe the bodies
themselves, but in time the remembrance of them; what is the nature of
all sensible things, and particularly those which attract with the
bait of pleasure or terrify by pain, or are noised abroad by vapoury
fame; how worthless, and contemptible, and sordid, and perishable, and
dead they are- all this it is the part of the intellectual faculty to
observe. To observe too who these are whose opinions and voices give
reputation; what death is, and the fact that, if a man looks at it
in itself, and by the abstractive power of reflection resolves into
their parts all the things which present themselves to the imagination
in it, he will then consider it to be nothing else than an operation
of nature; and if any one is afraid of an operation of nature, he is a
child. This, however, is not only an operation of nature, but it is
also a thing which conduces to the purposes of nature. To observe
too how man comes near to the deity, and by what part of him, and when
this part of man is so disposed.

-Marcus Aurelius Antonius