Marcus Aurelius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
What is it that can be done or said upon this material in the healthiest way? Whatever that may be, it is possible for you to do it or say it, and do not make excuses that you are being hindered. You will not stop groaning until you have come to feel about this the way the soft-living feel about their luxury: that to do, upon whatever matter is put before you and falls to you, the things proper to a human being's constitution — this is what you should take as enjoyment; and this is available everywhere. A cylinder is not given leave to move everywhere with its own proper motion, nor water, nor fire, nor anything else governed by nature or by an irrational soul, since the things that block and obstruct them are many. But mind and reason are able to travel through everything that stands against them, in just the way their nature is and just as they wish. Set before your eyes this ease with which reason will be carried through all things — as fire upward, as a stone downward, as a cylinder down a slope — and seek nothing further; for the remaining obstacles either belong to the dead little body, or, apart from opinion and the yielding of reason itself, they do not crush nor do any harm at all. Otherwise the one who suffers them would immediately become bad himself —
whereas among all other constructed things, whatever bad thing happens to any of them, the thing that suffers it becomes worse on that account; but here, if it must be said, the human being even becomes better and more praiseworthy by making right use of what befalls him. And in general remember this: nothing harms the natural citizen that does not harm the city, and nothing harms the city that does not harm the law; and of these so-called misfortunes, none harms the law. So then, what does not harm the law harms neither city nor citizen.