7. Never regard something as doing you good if it makes you betray a trust, or lose your sense of shame, or makes you show hatred, suspicion, ill will, or hypocrisy, or a desire for things best done behind closed doors. If you can privilege your own mind, your guiding spirit and your reverence for its powers, that should keep you clear of dramatics, of wailing and gnashing of teeth. You won't need solitude -- or a cast of thousands, either. Above all, you'll be free of fear and desire. And how long your body will contain the soul that inhabits it will cause you not a moment's worry. If it's time for you to go, leave willingly -- as you would to accomplish anything that can be done with grace and honor. And concentrate on this, your whole life long: for your mind to be in the right state -- the state a rational, civic mind should be in. 8. The mind of one set straight and purified: no pus, no dirt, no scabs. And not a life cut short by death, like an actor who stops before the play is done, the plot wound up. Neither servility nor arrogance. Neither cringing nor disdain. Neither excuses nor evasions. 9. Your ability to control your thoughts -- treat it with respect. It's all that protects your mind from false perceptions -- false to your nature, and that of all rational beings. It's what makes thoughtfulness possible, and affection for other people, and submission to the divine. 10. Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see. The span we live is small -- small as the corner of the earth in which we live it. Small as even the greatest renown, passed from mouth to mouth by short-lived stick figures, ignorant alike of themselves and those long dead. 11. To the stand-bys above, add this one: always to define whatever it is we perceive -- to trace its outline -- so we can see what it really is: its substance. Stripped bare. As a whole. Unmodified. And to call it by its name -- the thing itself and its components, to which it will eventually return. Nothing is so conducive to spiritual growth as this capacity for logical and accurate analysis of everything that happens to us. To look at it in such a way that we understand what need it fulfills, and in what kind of world. And its value to that world as a whole and to man in particular -- as a citizen of that higher city, of which all other cities are mere households. What is it -- this thing that now forces itself on my notice? What is it made up of? How long was it designed to last? And what qualities do I need to bring to bear on it -- tranquillity, courage, honesty, trustworthiness, straightforwardness, independence or what? So in each case you need to say: "This is due to God." Or: "This is due to the interweavings and intertwinings of fate, to coincidence or chance." Or: "This is due to a human being. Someone of the same race, the same birth, the same society, but who doesn't know what nature requires of him. But I do. And so I'll treat them as the law that binds us -- the law of nature -- requires. With kindness and with justice. And in inconsequential things? I'll do my best to treat them as they deserve."🏁

7. Never regard something as doing you good if it makes you betray a trust, or lose your sense of shame, or makes you show hatred, suspicion, ill will, or hypocrisy, or a desire for things best done behind closed doors. If you can privilege your own mind, your guiding spirit and your reverence for its powers, that should keep you clear of dramatics, of wailing and gnashing of teeth. You won't need solitude -- or a cast of thousands, either. Above all, you'll be free of fear and desire. And how long your body will contain the soul that inhabits it will cause you not a moment's worry. If it's time for you to go, leave willingly -- as you would to accomplish anything that can be done with grace and honor. And concentrate on this, your whole life long: for your mind to be in the right state -- the state a rational, civic mind should be in. 8. The mind of one set straight and purified: no pus, no dirt, no scabs. And not a life cut short by death, like an actor who stops before the play is done, the plot wound up. Neither servility nor arrogance. Neither cringing nor disdain. Neither excuses nor evasions. 9. Your ability to control your thoughts -- treat it with respect. It's all that protects your mind from false perceptions -- false to your nature, and that of all rational beings. It's what makes thoughtfulness possible, and affection for other people, and submission to the divine. 10. Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see. The span we live is small -- small as the corner of the earth in which we live it. Small as even the greatest renown, passed from mouth to mouth by short-lived stick figures, ignorant alike of themselves and those long dead. 11. To the stand-bys above, add this one: always to define whatever it is we perceive -- to trace its outline -- so we can see what it really is: its substance. Stripped bare. As a whole. Unmodified. And to call it by its name -- the thing itself and its components, to which it will eventually return. Nothing is so conducive to spiritual growth as this capacity for logical and accurate analysis of everything that happens to us. To look at it in such a way that we understand what need it fulfills, and in what kind of world. And its value to that world as a whole and to man in particular -- as a citizen of that higher city, of which all other cities are mere households. What is it -- this thing that now forces itself on my notice? What is it made up of? How long was it designed to last? And what qualities do I need to bring to bear on it -- tranquillity, courage, honesty, trustworthiness, straightforwardness, independence or what? So in each case you need to say: "This is due to God." Or: "This is due to the interweavings and intertwinings of fate, to coincidence or chance." Or: "This is due to a human being. Someone of the same race, the same birth, the same society, but who doesn't know what nature requires of him. But I do. And so I'll treat them as the law that binds us -- the law of nature -- requires. With kindness and with justice. And in inconsequential things? I'll do my best to treat them as they deserve."🏁