Marcus Aurelius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Act, speak, and think in every case as one for whom it is already possible to depart from life. But to leave the company of men is nothing terrible, if gods exist; for they would not involve you in anything bad. And if they do not exist, or if they take no care for human affairs, what is it to me to live in a universe empty of gods or empty of providence? But in truth gods do exist, and they do care for human affairs, and they have granted each person, as fully as anything could be granted, the means to avoid sliding into what is genuinely bad. And had there been anything else bad among the rest of things, they would have arranged likewise, so that avoiding it too would rest in everyone's hands. Yet how could something that fails to make a man worse make his life worse in turn? The nature of the whole would not have overlooked such things, whether through ignorance, or through knowing but being unable to guard against or correct them; nor would it have erred so greatly, whether from weakness or from lack of skill, that good things and bad should fall out indiscriminately, mixed together, on the good and on the bad alike. But death and life, honor and dishonor, hardship and pleasure, wealth and poverty — all these fall out equally on good men and bad, being in themselves neither noble nor shameful. Therefore they are neither good nor bad.