And what is common to all of them is but the littleness of their lives: and yet wouldst thou love and hate, as if these things should continue for ever.

In a little while thine eyes also will be closed, and he on whom thou perchance hast leaned thyself be himself a burden upon another.
"Bethink thee often of the swiftness with which the things that are, or are even now coming to be, are swept past thee: that the very substance of them is but the perpetual motion of water: that there is almost nothing which continueth: of that bottomless depth of time, so close at thy side.

Folly! to be lifted up, or sorrowful, or anxious, by reason of things like these! Think of infinite matter, and thy portion--how tiny a particle, of it! of infinite time, and thine own brief point there; of destiny, and the jot thou art in it; and yield thyself readily to the wheel of Clotho, to spin of thee what web she will.
"As one casting a ball from his hand, the nature of things hath had its aim with every man, not as to the ending only, but the first beginning of his course, and passage thither.

And hath the ball any profit of its rising, or loss as it descendeth again, or in its fall?
or the bubble, as it groweth or breaketh on the air?
or the flame of the lamp, from the beginning to the end of its brief story?
[204] "All but at this present that future is, in which nature, who disposeth all things in order, will transform whatsoever thou now seest, fashioning from its substance somewhat else, and therefrom somewhat else in its turn, lest the world grow old.

We are such stuff as dreams are made of--disturbing dreams.