music

ii — Declamatio
All that I am is either flesh, breath, or the ruling part. Like one at the point
of death, disdain this flesh, this corruptible bone and blood, this network
texture of nerves, veins, and arteries. Consider, too, what breath is: mere
air, always changing, expelled and inhaled again every moment. The third
is the ruling part. As to this, take heed it remain no longer in servitude;
dragged hither and thither like a puppet by every selfish impulse.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.2

iii — Exempli Gratia
The time is at hand when you shall forget all things, and when all shall
forget you.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.21

iv — Declamatio
The duration of man’s life is but an instant, the life of the body but a river,
and the life of the soul a misty dream. Existence is a warfare, and a journey
in a strange land; and the end of fame is to be forgotten. What then avails
to guide us? One thing; keeping the divinity within inviolate and intact;
victorious over pain and pleasure; free from temerity and falsehood;
independent of what others do or fail to do.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.17

v — Exempli Gratia
Time is a river, a violent torrent of things coming into being. Each, as soon
as it has appeared, is swept away: succeeded by another which is swept
away in its turn.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.43

vi — Exempli Gratia
All the earth is but a point in the Universe; how small a corner of that little
is inhabited. The world is a succession of changes: life is but thought.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.3

vii — Exempli Gratia
All things are for a day, both what remembers and what is remembered.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.35

viii — Declamatio
Whatever is beautiful is beautiful in itself. Its beauty ends there, and praise has
no part in it. True beauty needs nothing beyond itself, no more than truth, or kindness,
or honour. For none of these gets a single grace from praise or one blot from censure.
Does the emerald lose its virtue if one praise it not? Can one by scanting praise
depreciate gold, ivory, or purple, a lyre or a dagger, a rosebud ora sapling?
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.20

ix — Exempli Gratia
All that happens is as natural and familiar as a rose in spring, or fruit in
summer. Such are disease and death, calumny and treachery, and all else
which gives fools joy or sorrow.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.44

x — Declamatio
Some things hasten into being. Some hasten to be no more. Flux and
change constantly renew the world. In this vast river, where there is no
tarrying, what among the things that sweep by is worth the prizing? It is
as if a man grew fond of one among a passing flight of sparrows, already
vanished from sight. Our life is like a vapour of the blood or a drawing
in of air.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.15

xi — Declamatio
That which dies falls not out of the Universe. If then it stays here, here too it
suffers a change, and is resolved into those elements of which the world, and
you too, consist. These also are changed, and murmur not.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.18

xii — Exempli Gratia
All that happens is as natural and familiar as a rose in spring, or fruit in summer.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.44

xiii — Declamatio
Think of your long procrastination, and of the many opportunities given you,
by the Gods, but left unused. Surely it is time to understand the Universe of
which you are a part, and the Ruler of that Universe, of whom you are an emanation;
that a limit is set to your days, which, if you use them not for your enlightenment,
will depart, as you yourself will, and return no more.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.4

xiv — Exempli Gratia
Many grains of frankincense are laid on the same altar. One falls soon, another later.
It makes no difference.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.15

xv — Pendant
The weather is so warm a multitude of small pale moths have
mistakenly hatched. In the early dark they flip and flutter a foot
or two above the asphalt, as if trapped in a narrow wedge of
space-time beneath the obliterating imminence of winter.
John Updike, Towards the End of Time