Source identified
“In a world where all is fleeting, change alone endures.”
Stability is temporary, so practical judgment requires expecting change rather than treating present arrangements as permanent.
Source note: Counsels and Maxims, T. Bailey Saunders translation, in a discussion of fortune and apparent stability.
Source identified
“My trade and art is to live.”
Montaigne makes lived experience itself the central field of inquiry, treating ordinary life as material for reflection rather than a distraction from philosophy.
Source note: Essays of Montaigne, Book II, Charles Cotton translation; the sentence introduces his claim to speak from his own experience.
Source identified
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Voice: Dialogue speaker · Socrates
Socrates links a worthwhile human life with reflection on beliefs, conduct, and reasons rather than unexamined routine.
Source note: Apology 38a; wording varies by translation.
Source identified
“To be, or not to be: that is the question.”
Voice: Fictional character · Hamlet
The line condenses an existential dilemma into a question about endurance, action, fear, and the unknown consequences of death.
Source note: Act 3, Scene 1; Hamlet weighs existence against suffering and uncertainty.
Source identified
“He who binds to himself a joy does the winged life destroy.”
Trying to possess a joyful moment permanently can damage it, while accepting impermanence allows experience to remain alive and free.
Source note: Short poem commonly titled “Eternity”; Blake contrasts grasping with the passing movement of joy.
Source identified
“I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love.”
Death becomes continuity with nature rather than simple disappearance, connecting mortality with renewal, earth, and the lives that follow.
Source note: Final section of “Song of Myself”; the speaker imagines returning physically to the earth.