On the occasion of every act ask thyself, How is this with respect to me? Shall I repent of it?
A little time and I am dead, and all is gone. What more do I seek, if what I am now doing is work of an intelligent living being, and a social being, and one who is under the same law with God?
Alexander and Caius and Pompeius, what are they in comparison with Diogenes and Heraclitus and Socrates? For they were acquainted with things, and their causes [forms], and their matter, and the ruling principles of these men were the same. But as to the others, how many things had they to care for, and to how many things were they slaves?
Consider that men will do the same things nevertheless, even though thou shouldst burst.
This is the chief thing:
Be not perturbed, for all things are according to the nature of the universal; and in a little time thou wilt be nobody and nowhere, like Hadrian and Augustus.
In the next place having fixed thy eyes steadily on thy business look at it, and at the same time remembering that it is thy duty to be a good man, and what man’s nature demands, do that without turning aside; and speak as it seems to thee most just, only let it be with a good disposition and with modesty and without hypocrisy.
The nature of the universal has this work to do, to remove to that place the things which are in this, to change them, to take them away hence, and to carry them there.
All things are change, yet we need not fear anything new. All things are familiar to us; but the distribution of them still remains the same.