Marcus Aurelius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Do not wear away what remains of your life in imaginings about other people, whenever it serves no reference to some benefit for the community - for then you are deprived of some other task. That is, picturing what so-and-so is doing, and why, and what he is saying, and what he has in mind, and what he is scheming, and all such things, makes you wander away from watching over your own ruling faculty. One must therefore guard against the random and pointless in the chain of one's thoughts, and above all the meddlesome and malicious; and one should train oneself to think only such things that, if someone should suddenly ask, 'What are you thinking about right now?' you could answer at once and frankly, this or that - so that from the answer itself it would be clear immediately that everything in you is simple and kindly, and befitting a social creature that has no concern for imaginings of pleasure or of enjoyment altogether, or for any rivalry, malice, or suspicion, or anything else you would blush to admit you had in mind.
For such a man, no longer putting off being counted among the best, is a kind of priest and servant of the gods, making use also of that which is set up within him, which keeps the person untainted by pleasures, unwounded by any pain, untouched by any insult, unfeeling toward any wickedness - an athlete in the greatest of contests, that of not being thrown down by any passion, dyed through to the depth with justice, welcoming with his whole soul all that happens to him and is allotted to him, and not often, nor without great and communal necessity, imagining what someone else is saying or doing or thinking. For he attends in action only to what is his own, and continually reflects on what is spun out for him by the whole; the former he makes noble, and the latter he is convinced is good. For the portion allotted to each is carried along with him and carries him along in turn. And he remembers that everything rational is akin to him, and that caring for all human beings belongs to human nature, but that one should not cling to the opinion of everyone, only of those who live in acknowledged agreement with nature. As for those who do not live so, he keeps constantly in mind what sort of people they are, at home and away from home, night and day, what sort of company they keep.
So he takes no account of the praise that comes from such people, since they are not even pleased with themselves.