Again, it is a sin to pursue pleasure as a good and to avoid pain as an evil. It is bound to result in complaints that Nature is unfair in her rewarding of vice and virtue; since it is the bad who are so often in enjoyment of pleasures and the means to obtain them, while pains and events that occasion pains descend upon the heads of the good. Besides, if a man is afraid of pain, he is afraid of something happening which will be part of the appointed order of things, and this is itself a sin; if he is bent on the pursuit of pleasure, he will not stop at acts of injustice, which again is manifestly sinful. No; when Nature herself makes no distinction - and if she did, she would not have brought pains and pleasures into existence side by side - it behooves those who would follow in her footsteps to be like-minded and exhibit the same indifference. He therefore who does not view with equal unconcern pain or pleasure, death or life, fame or dishonour - all of them employed by Nature without any partiality - clearly commits a sin.

• good and evil
• nature
• pleasure
• sin
• stoicism
• suffering
• fame
• death
• life
• will
• existence
• evil
• virtue
• indifference

Above all, never struggle or strain; but be master of yourself, and view life as a man, as a human being, as a citizen, and as a mortal.  Among the truths you will do well to contemplate most frequently are these two: first, that things can never touch the soul, but stand inert outside it, so that disquiet can arise only from fancies within; and secondly, that all visible objects change in a moment, and will be no more.  Think of the countless changes in which you yourself have had a part.  The whole universe is change, and life itself is but what you deem it.

• stoicism
• taoism
• soul
• life
• will
• change
• struggle