Meditations X.13

Ask thyself as soon as thou art roused from sleep: Will it make any difference to me if another does what is just and right? It will make none. Hast thou forgotten that those who play the wanton²³ in their praise and blame of others, are such as they are²⁴ in their beds, at their board; and what are the things that they do, the things that they avoid or pursue, and how they pilfer and plunder, not with hands and feet but with the most precious part of them, whereby a man calls into being at will faith, modesty, truth, law, and a good ‘genius’?²⁵

• 23.See vii. 3; ix. 41.
• 24.See iii. 4, near the end; vi. 59; vii. 62; viii. 52, 53; ix. 34.
• 25.See vii. 17.