Regal powers and military commands, nobility of birth and political office, wealth and influence, and their opposites depend upon chance and are, therefore, controlled by circumstances. #Selection of a career:# But what rôle we ourselves may choose to sustain is decided by our own free choice.
Cicero distinguishes between external circumstances beyond one's control and the fundamental human ability to freely choose one's own path in life.
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Again, is there not the fact that the wisest man ever dies with the greatest cheerfulness, the most unwise with the least?
But if I am wrong in thinking the human soul immortal, I am glad to be wrong; nor will I allow the mistake which gives me so much pleasure to be wrested from me as long as I live.
But my soul, I know not how, refusing to be kept down, ever fixed its eyes upon future ages, as though from a conviction that it would begin to live only when it had left the body.
Now, old age is as it were the playing out of the drama, the full fatigue of which we should shun, especially when we also feel that we have had more than enough of it.
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