Marcus Aurelius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Will you ever, O my soul, be good, and simple, and one, and bare, more visible than the body that surrounds you? Will you ever taste the disposition of loving and affection? Will you ever be full and without want, longing for nothing and desiring nothing, neither anything ensouled nor anything soulless, for the enjoyment of pleasures — not even more time in which to go on enjoying them, not a place or a country or a kindlier climate, not harmony with other people? But will you instead be content with your present condition, and pleased with all that is now present, and persuade yourself that everything is present to you from the gods, that all is well with you and will be well, whatever is dear to them and whatever they are going to give for the preservation of that perfect living being — the good and just and beautiful, which begets all things and holds them together and encompasses and embraces them as they dissolve into the generation of others like them? Will you ever be such as to share your citizenship with gods and men in such a way that you neither find fault with them at all nor are condemned by them?