Letter 99 — On Consolation to the Bereaved (§31)

““Let us say this also to him who mourns and misses the untimely dead: that all of us, whether young or old, live, in comparison with eternity, on the same level as regards our shortness of life. For out of all time there comes to us less than what any one could call least, since ‘least’ is at any rate some part; but this life of ours is next to nothing, and yet (fools that we are!), we marshal it in broad array!”