You may enjoy now whatever you keep deferring, if you stop envying yourself your own happiness. Forget the past. Entrust the future to Providence. Bend the present to holiness, accepting willingly what the universe sends, and to righteousness, speaking truth without ambiguity and acting justly. Let no man's wickedness, opinion, or pampered flesh pull you off that course. Fear not that you will cease to live, but that you never lived according to nature. God sees the mind bare of outward encumbrances; strip luggage likewise and gain rest. You consist of body, life, and mind, but only the mind is properly yours. Separate from it what others do or say, future trouble, and sympathetic entanglements; live round and present like Empedocles' sphere. Wonder why we fear neighbours' opinions more than our own. Question gods about good men after death, yet argue freely because justice must be at the core.
Train even the left hand: despair of nothing at first use. Meditate on death's surprise, time's immensity, frailty, efficient causes, pain, pleasure, fame, all opinion. Practice dogmata like a pancratiast with hands free, not a gladiator with one sword. Divide worldly things into matter, form, and reference. Be happy needing only God's approval. Accuse neither gods nor ignorant men. Wonder at nature's course is ridiculous. Fate, Providence, or chaos: in each case reason governs what you can. At another's sin, ask if it is sin; if so, he condemned himself; you cannot forbid figs moisture or horses neighing.
If not fitting, do not; if not true, do not speak. Unfold each thing into form, matter, end, and time. Something in you outranks passions; aim only at the common good. All is opinion; remove it and find harbor calm. Death ends operations, not harmfully for the whole. Hold three readinesses: just action, chance or providence without accusation, vanity seen from above. Cast away opinion and you are safe: kinship of mind, nothing owned, only the present lived.
Smoke swallows wrathful emperors and prosecutors. See gods by daily providence, not argument alone. One sun though walls block it; one substance though bodies differ; one soul though essences divide. Desire long life only if sensitive chatter matters; otherwise follow God and reason. Your slice of eternity is tiny; crawl on a small clod yet conform to common nature. What is the present estate of my understanding? Everything outside the will is smoke. Stir contempt for death: even pleasure's devotees feared it; the praetor dismisses the actor fairly after three acts; go content when nature sends you off stage.
