Tanvika

“He who has a vehement desire for posthumous fame does not consider that every one of those who remember him will himself also die very soon; then again also they who have succeeded them, until the whole remembrance shall have been extinguished as it is transmitted through men who foolishly admire and perish. But suppose that those who will remember are even immortal, and that the remembrance will be immortal, what then is this to thee? And I say not what is it to the dead, but what is it to the living? What is praise except indeed so far as it has a certain utility? For thou now rejectest unseasonably the gift of nature, clinging to something else . .”
― Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius

“Lust and learning,' Katherine once said. 'That's really all there is, isn't it?' And it seemed to Stoner that that was exactly true, that that was one of the things he had learned.”
― John Williams, Stoner

“Liberation is not deliverance. One gets free from the galleys, but not from the sentence. That”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“If you accomplish something good with hard work, the labor passes quickly, but the good endures; if you do something shameful in pursuit of pleasure, the pleasure passes quickly, but the shame endures”
― Musonius Rufus