What is the nature of all sensible things, and particularly those which attract with the bait of pleasure or terrify by pain, or are noised abroad by vapory fame; how worthless, and contemptible, and sordid, and perishable, and dead they are,--all this it is the part of the intellectual faculty to observe.
In his personal reflections, this passage describes the intellectual faculty's role in discerning the true, transient nature of sensory experiences and external allurements.
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All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil.
Do not then consider life a thing of any value. + For look to the immensity of time behind thee, and to the time which is before thee, another boundless space.
Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial.
Besides this, he honored those who were true philosophers, and he did not reproach those who pretended to be philosophers, nor yet was he easily led by them.
Other voices in this conversation
