When you wake at dawn, say to yourself with what pleasure you will declare in a moment: it is a small thing for me to do what accords with justice, and with what nature dictates to me. And how could I complain of existence, I who was born for this? Am I not made to live in conditions where I must dwell with men whose nature it is to act unjustly? This does not please you: but see, you came into the world for this. What! should I not take a keener pleasure in doing what is according to my nature and conforms to justice, than in complaining of what is contrary to my nature and happened against my will? What pleasure, indeed, to call men back to truth, to show them the path that leads there! Those who refuse to follow it, you set aside, but without forgetting kindness and patience, for nature demands of us not only feelings but also conduct and practice. Therefore examine each action of your life and submit it to this rule. The day begins: let your first duty be to exercise your soul well. Men in fact seek only refuge in retreat: a country house by the sea, a house in the mountains. This is what you yourself wish for more than once. Yet all this marks in a man a most vulgar spirit, since it depends on you, at any moment, to withdraw into yourself. Nowhere can one retreat with more tranquility, nor in a calmer place, than into one's own soul. Above all, think on this: withdraw constantly into yourself, and thus be renewed without pause. Let your retreats be brief and swift, and let there come from them, on your return to the world, a fresh vision of things. For what troubles men? Not things, but the judgments they pass upon things. Look within: within is the wellspring of good, and it will gush forth ceaselessly, if you always dig. See how fragile and lowly things are: wretched objects, tatters, little living beings that perish, and people dying in droves, as theatergoers leave when the play is done. What distinguishes man from the rest of animals is reason. That reason and the rational faculty be common, this nature has given to all. It is not so with the other faculties. Even the desire for virtue is not shared by all men. But that in each of us reason be monarch and ruler, this nature grants to man. Consider the differences among men, and you will see that true superiority rests neither on birth, nor wealth, nor strength of body, but on the soul. We must cross this narrow strip of time given us, and cross it with confidence, with justice, content with what happens and with what has fallen to us from nature. So you lived, and provided you love what befalls you, that truth be in your words and justice in your actions, you will live happy, and no one can prevent you. As each body bears a particular bearing, in one gravity, in another ease, in another gentleness, so it is with the soul: each soul bears the imprint of its dispositions. The perfect human character is to live each day as if it were the last, without agitation, without sloth, without pretense. One cannot lose either the past or the future: for how could we be deprived of what we do not possess? Each lives only this present, this present instant: the rest either he has lived, or he may not live. A man's life is brief, but those who do not know how to use it lose far more than life: they lose what is most precious to them. Moreover, nothing vanishes that is not changed into something else, and the universe loses nothing it does not keep within itself. Take care, finally, not to be altered by the trifles of life, not to cling too much to instruments and accessories. Then you will no longer be able to return to what is essential, nor look at what must be looked at: it is the gaze that makes everything. For divinity is in your conduct, harmony is in your soul, if you keep it upright and hold it within its proper bounds.