Marcus Aurelius...

It is almost 2,000 years since Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius gave grateful thanks for the blessings of this life. “Observe how transient and trivial is all mortal life; yesterday a drop of semen, tomorrow a handful of ashes. So spend these fleeting moments on earth as Nature would have you spend them, and then go to your rest with good grace, as an olive falls in its season, with a blessing for the earth that bore it and a thanksgiving to the tree that gave it life”...