By Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher
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But consider, my friend, whether possibly high spirit and virtue are not something other than saving one’s own life and being saved. Perhaps a man who is really a man must leave on one side the question of living as long as he can, and must not love his life, but commit these things to God, and, believing the woman’s proverb that no one ever escaped his destiny, must consider, with that in his mind, how he may live the best possible life in the time that is given him to live.
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Alexander the Great and his stable boy were levelled in death, for they were either taken up into the same life-giving principles of the Universe or were scattered without distinction into the atoms.
