Meditations III.12

If in obedience to right reason thou doest the thing that thy hand findeth to do earnestly, manfully, graciously, and in no sense as a by-work,²⁸ and keepest that divine ‘genius’²⁹ of thine in its virgin state, just as if even now thou wert called upon to restore it to the Giver—if thou grapple this to thee, looking for nothing, shrinking from nothing, but content with a present sphere of activity such as Nature allows, and with old-world truth in every word and utterance of thy tongue, thou shalt be happy in thy life. And there is no one that is able to prevent this.

• 28.Compare Dio’s Roman History 71. 6, § 2 (of Marcus): οὐδὲν ἐν παρέργῳ οὔτε ἔλεγεν οὔτε ἔγραψεν οὔτε ἐποίει.

  The historian Dio’s Greek, in translation: “he neither said nor wrote nor did anything as a by-work.”

• 29.See iii. 6, § 2.