[32.] About death: whether it is a dispersion, or a resolution into atoms, or annihilation, it is either extinction or change.
[33.] About pain: the pain which is intolerable carries us off; but that which lasts a long time is tolerable; and the mind maintains its own tranquillity by retiring into itself, and the ruling faculty is not made worse. But the parts which are harmed by pain, let them, if they can, give their opinion about it.
[34.] About fame: look at the minds [of those who seek fame], observe what they are, and what kind of things they avoid, and what kind of things they pursue. And consider that as the heaps of sand piled on one another hide the former sands; so in life the events which go before are soon covered by those which come after.
35. From Plato:[A] The man who has an elevated mind and takes a view of all time and of all substance, dost thou suppose it possible for him to think that human life is anything great? It is not possible, he said.—Such a man then will think that death also is no evil.—Certainly not.
36. From Antisthenes: It is royal to do good and to be abused.
37. It is a base thing for the countenance to be obedient and to regulate and compose itself as the mind commands, and for the mind not to be regulated and composed by itself.
38. It is not right to vex ourselves at things, For they care nought about it.[B]
39. To the immortal gods and us give joy.
40. Life must be reaped like the ripe ears of corn.
One man is born; another dies.[C]
[A] Plato, Pol. vi. 486.