9781945186240

If you can embrace this without fear or expectation—can find
fulfillment in what you’re doing now, as Nature intended, and in
superhuman truthfulness (every word, every utterance)—then your life will
be happy.
No one can prevent that.
13. Doctors keep their scalpels and other instruments handy, for
emergencies. Keep your philosophy ready too—ready to understand heaven
and earth. In everything you do, even the smallest thing, remember the
chain that links them. Nothing earthly succeeds by ignoring heaven, nothing
heavenly by ignoring the earth.
14. Stop drifting. You’re not going to re-read your Brief Comments,
your Deeds of the Ancient Greeks and Romans, the commonplace books
you saved for your old age. Sprint for the finish. Write off your hopes, and
if your well-being matters to you, be your own savior while you can.
15. They don’t realize how much is included in stealing, sowing,
buying, resting, seeing to business (not with the eyes, but another kind of
sight).
16. Body. Soul. Mind.
Sensations: the body.
Desires: the soul.
Reasoning: the mind.
To experience sensations: even grazing beasts do that. To let your
desires control you: even wild animals do that—and rutting humans, and
tyrants (from Phalaris to Nero . . .).
To make your mind your guide to what seems best: even people who
deny the gods do that. Even people who betray their country. Even people
who do behind closed doors.
If all the rest is common coin, then what is unique to the good man?
To welcome with affection what is sent by fate. Not to stain or disturb
the spirit within him with a mess of false beliefs. Instead, to preserve it
faithfully, by calmly obeying God—saying nothing untrue, doing nothing
unjust. And if the others don’t acknowledge it—this life lived with
simplicity, humility, cheerfulness—he doesn’t resent them for it, and isn’t
deterred from following the road where it leads: to the end of life. An end to