Meditations V.29

Thou canst live on earth as thou dost purpose to live when departed. But if men will not have it so, then is it time for thee even to go out of life,⁶⁰ yet not as one who is treated ill. ’Tis smoky and I go away.⁶¹ Why think it a great matter? But while no such cause drives me forth, I remain a free man, and none shall prevent me from doing what I will, and I will what is in accordance with the nature of a rational and social creature.

• 60.See on iii. 1. Compare viii. 47.
• 61.Epictetus’s Discourses i. 25, § 18; iv. 10, § 27.

  In Epictetus the smoky room is an image for circumstances that make life intolerable: a little smoke can be borne, but if there is too much, one leaves, and the door is open.