Lucian of Samosata (c. 120-180+)
“You must have noticed the bubbles caused by a spring of water splashing down—I mean the way they gather together to cause a foam? Some of them are small and quickly burst and are gone; some last longer, and as others join them they swell and grow enormously: yet inevitably they too burst in due course, as they must. Such is the life of man. They are all inflated with the breath of life, some bigger, others smaller. Some have a short-lived inflation, doomed to early death; others die at the moment of birth: but they must all burst in the end.”
- From Charon or The Observers (section 19) by Lucian of Samosata, translated by C. D. N. Costa in Selected Dialogues (Oxford University Press / Oxford World Classics, 2005, 2006, 2009).
