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A life need not be long to be sufficient; a short life may be complete.

Death is a loss to the living, but not necessarily a misfortune to the dead.

Treat the people you love as precious loans from fortune, not permanent possessions.

The Stoic Seneca (d. 65 CE) was the master of the "consolation," a letter written for the express purpose of comforting someone who has been bereaved. Seneca wrote at least three consolations, to Marcia, to Polybius, and to Helvia. In the Consolation to Helvia, he comforts his own mother on "losing" him to exile—an unusual case, and literary innovation, of the lamented consoling the lamenter.

The emperor Marcus Aurelius (d. 180 CE) had at least 14 children with his wife Faustina, but only four daughters and one unfortunate son, Commodus, outlived their parents. In the Meditations, Marcus likens his children to leaves, and paraphrases Homer in the Iliad:

Men come and go as leaves year by year upon the trees. Those of autumn the wind sheds upon the ground, but when the spring returns the forest buds forth with fresh vines.

Men come and go as leaves year by year upon the trees. Those of autumn the wind sheds upon the ground, but when the spring returns the forest buds forth........

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