Perfection of character: to live your last day, every day, without frenzy, or sloth, or pretence.
Marcus Aurelius (AD 120 – 180), Meditations (7.59)
Note, unusually, I’ve taken the above from the Gregory Hays translation. My more usual Maxwell Staniforth translation has…
To live each day as though one’s last, never flustered, never apathetic, never attitudinising – here is the perfection of character.
