It Only Happens Once

Blog — Quotes

1 quote on self-improvement + detachment + death

Whatever this is that I am, it is flesh and a little spirit and an intelligence. Throw away your books; stop letting yourself be distracted. That is not allowed. Instead, as if you were dying right now, despise your flesh. A mess of blood, pieces of bone, a woven tangle of nerves, veins, arteries. Consider what the spirit is: air, and never the same air, but vomited out and gulped in again every instant. Finally, the intelligence. Think of it this way: You are an old man. Stop allowing your mind to be a slave, to be jerked about by selfish impulses, to kick against fate and the present, and to mistrust the future.

Meditations, Book 2:220 more from Marcus Aurelius

Added in 2026

This site is an independent project built with

Typeset in

Newsreader
reading
Atkinson Hyperlegible
interface

Atkinson was drawn by the Braille Institute so that people who struggle to read still can.

There is no AI-generated content on this blog; all content is authored, edited, and compiled by me. Claude Code was only used to streamline the development process of the site itself.

View my project on GitHubRSS