It is a large part of goodness to desire to become good. There is a certain fitness in the feeling of sorrow; this the sage ought to heed, and just as in everything else so in grief there is a proper mean. What fate did not give it did not take away. To obey God is liberty. No one is out of the reach of the temptation of vice unless he has banished it wholly from his breast; and no one has banished it wholly until he has put wisdom in its stead. Great is the praise if man is helpful to man. We admonish you to extend a hand to the shipwrecked; to point out the way to the lost; to share your bread with the hungry. No one ever renders a service to another without also rendering a service to himself. Often what is given is a small matter; what follows from it, a great one. When we reason upon the immortality of the soul, we do not regard as of little weight the universal belief of men who either fear or revere the gods of the lower world. That day which thou dreadest as if it were thy last is the day of the birth into eternity. A time will come that shall unite us and bring us into each other’s company. Then shall our soul have reason to rejoice because, freed from this darkness in which it is involved, it shall see the light, no longer with feeble vision, but in all the brightness of day, and it will have returned to its own heaven since it will again occupy the place which belongs to it by right of birth. Its origin calls it on high. Let another begin a quarrel, but let reconciliation begin with thee. What else is nature than God and the divine reason that permeates the whole world and all its parts. Whithersoever thou turnest thou wilt see Him before thee; there is no place where He is not; He Himself fills all His work. Every crime is committed before the deed is done. The human mind has come down from the spirit that dwells on high. Believe me, the creator of this vast universe, whoever he may have been, whether it was a god, master of everything, whether it was an incorporeal intelligence able to bring forth the most brilliant marvels, whether it was a divine spirit diffused with equal energy in the smallest and the largest things, whether it was destiny and an immutable concatenation of causes linked together: this sovereign potentate did not wish to leave us dependent upon any one else even in the smallest matters. Stars shall impinge upon stars and all matter that now delights us with its beautiful order will burn in one huge conflagration. How often he who refuses pardon to others begs it for himself! It is base to say one thing and mean another; it is baser to write one thing and mean another. A wise man will pardon an injury, though it be great, and if he can do it without breach of piety and fidelity, that is, if the whole injury pertains to himself. As far as thou canst, accuse thyself, try thyself, discharge the office, first of a prosecutor, then of a judge, lastly of an intercessor.