And accordingly the healthy understanding ought to be prepared for everything which happens; but that which says, Let my dear children live, and let all men praise whatever I may do, is an eye which seeks for green things, or teeth which seek for soft things.
Marcus Aurelius concludes his analogy by stating that a healthy mind should be prepared for all events, contrasting this with a mind that seeks only pleasant outcomes.
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That which is from fortune is not separated from nature or without an interweaving and involution with the things which are ordered by providence.
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.
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.
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