Marcus Aurelius

https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/11/18/marcus-aurelius-meditations-mortality/

Alexander the Great and his mule driver both died and the same thing happened to both. They were absorbed alike into the life force of the world, or dissolved alike into atoms.

We have to go there too, where all of them have already gone: 

… the eloquent and the wise — Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Socrates …
… the heroes of old, the soldiers and kings who followed them …
… the smart, the generous, the hardworking, the cunning, the selfish …
… and even [those] who laughed at the whole brief, fragile business. 

All underground for a long time now. 

And what harm does it do them? Or the others either — the ones whose names we don’t even know?

The only thing that isn’t worthless: to live this life out truthfully and rightly. And be patient with those who don’t.

"The brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over we realize this: that the human race has been roughly handled, but that it has advanced." 

Fitzgerald

https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2432116-the-beautiful-and-damned

Fitzgerald always wrote such beautiful prose...

“i'm a slave to my emotions, to my likes, to my hatred of boredom, to most of my desires”

“The unwelcome November rain had perversely stolen the day's last hour and pawned it with that ancient fence, the night.”

― F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

The second quote is really pretty.

Ahead

I hope Mr Lewis is right...