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 (here), and I endure to wash this miserable body, to feed it and to clothe it. But when I was younger, God imposed on me also another thing, and I submitted to it. Why then do you not submit, when Nature who has given us this body takes it away? I love the body, you may say. Well, as I said just now, Nature gave you also this love of the body: but Nature says, Leave it now, and have no more trouble (with it).

When a man dies young, he blames the gods. When he is old and does not die, he blames the gods because he suffers when he ought to have already ceased from suffering. And nevertheless, when death approaches, he wishes to live, and sends to the physician and intreats him to omit no care or trouble. Wonderful, he said, are men, who are neither willing to live nor to die.

To the longer life and the worse, the shorter life, if it is better, ought by all means to be preferred.

When we are children our parents deliver us to a paedagogue to take care on all occasions that we suffer no harm. But when we are become men, God delivers us to our innate conscience to take care of us. This guardianship then we must in no way despise, for we shall both displease God and be enemies to our own conscience.

[We ought to use wealth as the material for some act, not for every act alike.]