Marcus Aurelius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
The man who does wrong acts impiously. For since the nature of the whole has made rational creatures for one another's sake, so that they should help one another according to merit and never harm one another, whoever transgresses her will is plainly impious toward the eldest of the gods. And the man who lies is likewise impious toward that same divine power; for the universal nature is the nature of things that are, and things that are stand in kinship with all things that exist. Moreover this nature bears the further name of truth, and stands as the original source of everything true. So the man who lies willingly is impious, insofar as by deceiving he does wrong; and the man who lies unwillingly is impious too, insofar as he falls out of harmony with the nature governing everything, and insofar as he disturbs the order by fighting against the nature of the world — for whoever is carried toward things opposed to the truth fights against himself, since he had already received the resources for it from nature, and by neglecting them he is no longer able now to distinguish the false from the true. And further, the man who pursues pleasures as goods and flees hardships as evils is impious; for such a man must inevitably, again and again, find fault with the common nature, as though it dealt out things unfairly to the worthless and to the good — since the worthless are often found among pleasures and possess the means to them, while the good fall into hardship and the things that produce it.
What's more, the man who fears hardships will sometimes come to fear things that are bound to happen in the world too, and that already is impious; and the man who chases after pleasures will not hold back from doing wrong, and that is plainly impious. But toward the things the common nature treats alike — for it would not do both unless it were disposed alike toward both — toward these, those who wish to follow nature must also be disposed alike, being of one mind with her. So whoever is not disposed alike toward hardship and pleasure, or death and life, or reputation and disrepute, all of which the nature of the whole employs alike, is clearly impious. And by the common nature's 'employing these alike' I mean that they befall alike, in due sequence, all things that come to be and come after, by a kind of ancient impulse of providence — the impulse by which, starting from some beginning, it set out toward this present ordering of the world, having conceived certain principles of things to come and marked out generative powers for such comings-into-being, changes, and successions.