“Never value anything as profitable that compels you to break your promise, to lose your self-respect, to desire anything that needs walls and curtains: for he who has preferred to everything else his own intelligence and daimon and the worship of its excellence, acts no tragic part, does not groan, will not need either solitude or much company; and what is chief of all, he will live without pursuing or flying from death; but whether for a longer or a shorter time he shall have the soul enclosed in the body, he cares not at all: for even if he must depart immediately, he will go as readily as if he were going to do anything else that can be done with decency and order; taking care of this only all through life, that his thoughts abide with the concerns of an intelligent animal and a member of a civil community.”
From the Dover Thrift Edition: “Meditations,” Marcus Aurelius (Dover Publications, Inc., Mineola, NY), ISBN 0-486-29823-X. Unabridged, modernized Dover (1997) republication of the George Long translation. New Introduction. Publisher’s Note. 112pp.
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius 