Stoic Snippets 57

So you do not love yourself, for if you did, you would love your nature and her will. 

But those who love their several arts exhaust themselves in working at them unwashed and without food; but you value your own nature less than the turner values the turning art, or the dancer the dancing art, or the lover of money values his money, or the vainglorious man his little glory. 

And such men, when they have a violent affection to a thing, choose neither to eat nor to sleep rather than to perfect the things that they care for. But are the acts that concern society more vile in your eyes and less worthy of your labor?

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5.1