Marcus Aurelius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Of human life, the time is a point, its substance flowing, its perception dim, the composition of the whole body prone to decay, the soul a whirl, fortune hard to divine, fame indiscriminate. In sum: everything of the body is a river, everything of the soul is dream and vapor, life is a war and a stay in a foreign land, and reputation after death is oblivion. What, then, can escort a person through? One thing, and one thing only: philosophy. And this consists in keeping the guiding spirit within unabused and unharmed, superior to pleasures and pains, doing nothing at random, nor falsely and with pretense, needing nothing that another do or not do; and further, in accepting what happens and is allotted to it as coming from that same source from which the person himself came; and above all, in waiting for death with a gracious mind, seeing it as nothing but a dissolution of the elements out of which every living being is composed. And if there is nothing terrible to the elements themselves in each one continually changing into another, why should anyone eye with distrust the transformation and breaking-apart of everything that is? Such is simply nature's way, and nothing that follows nature's way can be evil. Written at Carnuntum.