Make this your constant thought: how many doctors who once looked so stern and dramatically frowned at their patients are now dead themselves. How many fortune-tellers who proudly predicted other people's deaths are gone. How many philosophers who wrote long books about death and eternal life have died. How many brave generals who killed so many others in battle are dead. How many kings and tyrants who brutally abused their power over people's lives — as if they would live forever — are now gone. And how many entire cities have vanished: Helice, Pompeii, Herculaneum, and countless others. Think also of all the people you have watched die in your own lifetime, one after another.
Let it be thy perpetual meditation, how many physicians who once looked so grim, and so theatrically shrunk their brows upon their patients, are dead and gone themselves. How many astrologers, after that in great ostentation they had foretold the death of some others, how many philosophers after so many elaborate tracts and volumes concerning either mortality or immortality; how many brave captains and commanders, after the death and slaughter of so many; how many kings and tyrants, after they had with such horror and insolency abused their power upon men's lives, as though themselves had been immortal; how many, that I may so speak, whole cities both men and towns: Helice, Pompeii, Herculaneum, and others innumerable are dead and gone. Run them over also, whom thou thyself, one after another, hast known in thy time to drop away.