Riptide (Jake Lassiter, #5)

by Paul Levine

“A learned man always has wealth within himself.”

Everything we have created, good and bad, will fade and crumple and be lost to the winds of time. Those who mourn our departure will pass, too, so that all memories of us will die in the flicker of a cosmic eyelash. Rather than depress him, these thoughts calmed Lassiter with the knowledge that life was so fleeting, it was useless to waste precious moments in a state of fear.

A depressing fact, but then when you're dead, you won't care anyway. Still, to not live in a state of fear is super valuable a lesson.