Marcus Aurelius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
There are three things of which you are composed: a little body, a little breath, and mind. Of these, the first two are yours only insofar as you must care for them, but only the third truly belongs to you. So if you separate from yourself - that is, from your own understanding - whatever others do or say, whatever you yourself have done or said, whatever troubles you as something to come, and whatever, belonging to the little body wrapped around you or to the connate breath, is attached without your choice, and whatever the external whirl of circumstance sweeps along; so that, freed from the things bound up with fate and pure, the power of your mind may live independent, on its own, doing what is just, willing what happens, and speaking the truth - if, I say, you separate from this ruling faculty the things attached to it through undue attachment, and the stretches of time both ahead and behind, and make yourself like Empedocles' sphere, "rounded, rejoicing in its circling stillness," and practice living only what you actually live, that is, the present, then you will be able to live out the time remaining to you until death untroubled, kindly, and at peace with your own guiding spirit.