How cheap and rotten every material thing is! Water, dust, and from mixing these — bones and all the disgusting stuff our bodies are made of. So easily infected and corrupted. And those other things people prize so much, like marble — what are they but the seeds of the earth? Gold and silver are just the earth's waste. Your finest clothes are nothing but sheep's hair, dyed with the blood of shellfish. Everything else is like this too. Your life itself is the same — just blood vapor that can easily change into something else ordinary.
How base and putrid, every common matter is! Water, dust, and from the mixture of these bones, and all that loathsome stuff that our bodies do consist of: so subject to be infected, and corrupted. And again those other things that are so much prized and admired, as marble stones, what are they, but as it were the kernels of the earth? gold and silver, what are they, but as the more gross faeces of the earth? Thy most royal apparel, for matter, it is but as it were the hair of a silly sheep, and for colour, the very blood of a shell-fish; of this nature are all other things. Thy life itself, is some such thing too; a mere exhalation of blood: and it also, apt to be changed into some other common thing.