Stoic Snippets 258

All those things at which you wish to arrive by a circuitous road you  can have now, if you do not refuse them to yourself. 

And this means, if you will take no notice of all the past, and trust the future to Providence, and direct the present only conformably to piety and justice.  

Conformably to piety that you may be content with the lot which is assigned to you, for Nature designed it for you and you for it. 

Conformably to justice, that you may always speak the truth freely and without disguise, and do the things which are agreeable to law and according to the worth of each. 

And let neither another man's wickedness hinder you, nor opinion nor voice, nor yet the sensations of the poor flesh which has grown about you; for the passive part will look to this. . . . 

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 12.1 

IMAGE: Noël Coypel, The Chariot of Jupiter Between Justice and Piety (c. 1671)