“If man reflects on the changes and transformations which follow one another like wave after wave and their rapidity, he will despise everything which is perishable.”
IX, 28
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book IX
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Marcus Aurelius 400
Emperor of Ancient Rome 121–180Related quotes

“One must always be prepared for riotous and endless waves of transformation.”
Source: Eat, Pray, Love

“Everything's destiny is to change, to be transformed, to perish. So that new things can be born.”

Alternate translation: The voice is a flowing breath, made sensible to the organ of hearing by the movements it produces in the air. It is propagated in infinite numbers of circular zones, exactly as when a stone is thrown into a pool of standing water countless circular undulations are generated therein, which, increasing as they recede from the center, spread out over a great distance, unless the narrowness of the locality or some obstacle prevent their reaching their termination; for the first line or waves, when impeded by obstructions, throw by their backward swell the succeeding circular lines of waves into confusion. Quoted by Ernst Mach, The Science of Mechanics: A Critical and Historical Account of its Development (1893, 1960) Tr. Thomas J. McCormack
Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book V, Chapter IV, Sec. 6

“To judge a man by his weakest link or deed is like judging the power of the ocean by one wave.”
Handwriten message on Elvis' King James -Bible
[Seismology and plate tectonics, Cambridge, UK; New York, Cambridge University Press, 1990, http://books.google.com/books?id=tZRxPzwoChIC&pg=PA4] (pp. 4–5)
Seismology and Plate Tectonics (1990)