A third in a manner does not even know what he has done, but he is like a vine which has produced grapes, and seeks for nothing more after it has once produced its proper fruit.
In his reflections on giving, Marcus Aurelius describes the ideal benefactor as one who gives selflessly, like a vine producing fruit without expectation.
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But to be strong enough both to bear the one and to be sober in the other is the mark of a man who has a perfect and invincible soul, such as he showed in the illness of Maximus.
Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial.
One is that things do not touch the soul, for they are external and remain immovable; but our perturbations come only from the opinion which is within.
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