These are the passages the practice actually rests on, not the ones that circulate on quote cards. If you came here after seeing something attributed to Marcus Aurelius about echoing in eternity, that line is from a film: see our list of misattributed Stoic quotes.
You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations II.11
Even if you were destined to live three thousand years, or thrice ten thousand, nevertheless remember this — that no one loses any other life than that which he lives now, nor lives any other than that which he loses.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations II.14
Of human life. Time: a point. Substance: in flux. Perception: dim. Condition of the body: decaying. Soul: spinning around. Fortune: unpredictable. Lasting fame: uncertain.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations II.17
What a tiny share of the boundless and unfathomable time is allotted to each of us; it is soon swallowed up in eternity.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations XII.32
The perfection of moral character consists in this: in passing every day as the last, and in being neither violently excited, nor torpid, nor playing the hypocrite.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations VII.69
Let death and exile, and all other things which appear terrible, be daily before your eyes, but most of all death; and you will never entertain any abject thought, nor too eagerly covet anything.
Epictetus, Enchiridion 21
I must die. If now, then I die now; if later, then I will dine now, since dinner-time has come, and afterwards I will die.
Epictetus, Discourses I.1
Rehearse death. To say this is to tell a person to rehearse his freedom. A person who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius Letter 26
Let us prepare our minds as if we'd come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life's books each day.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius Letter 101
He who fears death will never do anything worthy of a living man. But he who knows that this was the condition laid down for him at the moment of his conception will live in accordance with that knowledge.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius Letter 77
Nothing is ours, except time. We were entrusted by nature with the ownership of this single thing, so fleeting and slippery that anyone who will can oust us from possession.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius Letter 1
It is not possible to live well today unless one regards it as one's last.
Musonius Rufus, Lectures fragment
Marcus turns these into a daily practice for iOS: a morning preparation, a daily reading matched to what you are working on, and an honest evening examination.
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