Book 4
4
Mindful of this, enjoy the present and accept all things in their season. If you meet in action any of those things which you have made a subject of study, rejoice in them. If you have laid aside ill-nature and reviling; if you have lessened your harshness, indecent language, inconsiderateness, effeminacy; if you are not moved by the same things as formerly, or in the same manner as formerly,—you may keep a perpetual festival, to-day for success in one affair, tomorrow for another. How much better a reason for sacrifice is this than obtaining a consulship or a government! These things you have from yourself and from the gods. Remember this,—who it is that gave them, and to whom and for what purpose. Habituated once to these reasonings, can you still think that it makes any difference what place God allots you? Are not the gods everywhere at the same distance? Do not they everywhere see equally what is doing?
Concerning the quarrelsome and ferocious.
