Memento mori — remember death! These are important words. If we kept in mind that we will soon inevitably die, our lives would be completely different. If a person knows that he will die in a half hour, he certainly will not bother doing trivial, stupid, or, especially, bad things during this half hour. Perhaps you have half a century before you die — what makes this any different from a half hour?

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) Russian novelist and moral philosopher

Path of Life [Calendar of Wisdom; Круг чтения], ch. 21 “Living in the Present,” sec. 5.12 (1903-1911) [(tr. Cote (2002)]
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