Stoic Snippets 229

To her who gives and takes back all, to Nature, the man who is instructed and modest says, "Give what you will; take back what you will." 

And he says this not proudly, but obediently, and well pleased with her. 

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 10.14 

IMAGE: Jan Sanders van Hemessen, Allegory of Nature as the Mother of Art (c. 1550)