May 12

Life is a constant movement towards death, which is why life can only be good when death is not seen as an evil.

1

The days of our years are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty years; yet their pride is but labor and sorrow, for it passes quickly, and we fly away.

— Psalm 90:10

2

When we have the full strength of health and mental faculties, we think about other people and about the most trifling of worries, but not about God; it is as if decorum and custom demand that we think about God only when we have just enough reason left to admit that we are no longer in possession of it.

— La Bruyère

3

Imagine a crowd of people in chains. They have all been sentenced to death, and every day some of them are executed before the others. As they see the dying and await their turn, those who are left look upon their own fate.

How should people live in such circumstances? Should they really be beating, torturing and killing each other? In such circumstances the cruelest bandits are not going to harm each other. And meanwhile everyone is in this position—and what are they doing?

— After Pascal

4

We see how a person of importance falls and suddenly dies; how another fades before our eyes, grows weaker by the day, and is finally extinguished. Such striking events remain unnoticed, they touch no one. People do not pay any more attention to them than to a withering flower, or to a falling leaf. They covet the vacated posts, or inquire whether or not they have become occupied, and by whom.

— La Bruyère

5

“Here I shall dwell in the rain season, and there I will settle down for the summer.” Thus dreams the fool and does not think of death. But death comes suddenly and carries off the one who is distracted, selfish and absent-minded, as a flood carries off a sleeping village.

Neither son, nor father, nor relatives and neighbors—no one can help us when we are struck by death; the one who is good and wise, the one who has clearly grasped the meaning of this, strives to clear the way that leads to Nirvana.

— The Dhammapada

6

A human being arrives into the world with his hands clenched, seemingly saying: the whole world is mine, but he departs from it with open palms, seemingly saying: look, I take nothing with me.

— The Talmud

7

He spoke a parable to them, saying, “The ground of a certain rich man produced abundantly. He reasoned within himself, saying, ‘What will I do, because I don’t have room to store my crops?’ He said, ‘This is what I will do. I will pull down my barns, build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. I will tell my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years. Take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry.”’ But God said to him, ‘You foolish one, tonight your soul is required of you. The things which you have prepared—whose will they be?’”

— Luke 12:16–20

8

“These sons belong to me, these riches belong to me,” so thinks a fool. How can sons and riches belong to him, when he himself does not belong to himself?

— The Dhammapada

9

We are carelessly rushing into an abyss, holding before us a screen to avoid seeing it.

— Pascal

10

Live as if you are about to bid farewell to your life, as if the time that has been left to you is an unexpected gift.

— Marcus Aurelius

11

The whole of your life is a tiny particle of infinite time. So see that you make the most of it.

— Said bin Hamed

Remember that you are not living in the world, but passing through it.