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Meditations · Book IX · 12Meditations

Book IX · 12

Labor not as one who is wretched, nor yet as one who would be pitied or admired; but direct thy will to one thing only—to put thyself in motion and to check thyself, as the social reason requires.

Do thy work not as a drudge, nor as desirous of pity or praise. Desire one thing only, to act or not to act as civic reason directs.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations IX.12. Translated by George Long (1862). The Stoic Library.