All cannot be happy at once, for because the glory of one State depends upon the ruine of another, there is a revolution and vicissitude of their gre… - Thomas Browne

Lastly, If length of Days be thy Portion, make it not thy Expectation: rekon not upon long Life, but live always beyond thy Account. He that so often surviveth his Expectations, lives many lives, and will hardly complain of the shortness of his Days. Time past is gone like a shadow; make Times to come, present; conceive that near which may be far off; approximate thy last times by present Apprehensions of them: live like a Neighbour unto Death, and think that there is but little to come. And since there is something in us that must live on, joyn both lives together; unite them in thy Thoughts and Actions, and live in one but for the other. He who thus ordereth the Purposes of this Life, will never be far from the next; and is in some manner already in it, by an happy Conformity, and close Apprehension of it.

All cannot be happy at once, for because the glory of one State depends upon the ruine of another, there is a revolution and vicissitude of their greatnesse, which must obey the swing of that wheele, not moved by Intelligences, but by the hand of God, whereby all Estates arise to their Zenith and verticall points, according to their predistinated periods. For the lives not onely of men, but of Commonweales, and the whole World, run not upon an Helix that still enlargeth, but on a Circle where arriving to their Meridian, they decline in obscurity, and fall under the Horizon againe.

Heresies perish not with their authors; but, like the river Arethusa, though they lose their currents in one place, they rise up again in another. One general council is not able to extirpate one single heresy: it may be cancelled for the present; but revolution of time, and the like aspects from heaven, will restore it, when it will flourish till it be condemned again. For, as though there were metempsychosis, and the soul of one man passed into another, opinions do find, after certain revolutions, men and minds like those that first begat them. To see ourselves again, we need not look for Plato’s year: every man is not only himself; there have been many Diogenes, and as many Timons, though but few of that name; men are lived over again; the world is now as it was in ages past; there was none then, but there hath been some one since, that parallels him, and is, as it were, his revived self.