"Though you were to live three thousand years, or three million, still remember that no man loses any other life than this which he now lives... The longest and the shortest thus come to the same... For the present is the only thing a man can lose... Bear in mind also that every man lives only in the present, which is an individual point, and that all the rest of his life is either past or uncertain. Short then is the time which any man lives; and short too the longest posthumous fame, and even this is handed on by a succession of poor human beings, who will very soon die, and who know not even themselves, much less one who died long ago."
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2:14 & 3:10
(Painting: "Portrait of an Old Man in Red," by Rembrandt)