Marcella'ya Mektup: Tanrılara Yükseliş

...give more than is fitting to my absence, nor, out of a longing for my teaching, cast away what has already been given. Nor, in the face of the crowd of strangers surrounding you, should you lose heart and allow yourself to be abandoned to the rushing river of worldly affairs. Instead, consider that the possession of truly good things is not won by humans through ease. Use these very circumstances as training for the life you expect. These trials alone are the only rivals to your endurance that have the power to turn you aside or overcome you. For the schemes of others are entirely contemptible to those who have trained themselves to disregard things not under our control. Such people judge that injustice turns back upon those who commit it, rather than harming those against whom it is directed—especially when the loss is not considered great by those whose lives are lived in opposition to worldly values. Regarding the absence of one who benefits your soul—who is at once father, husband, teacher, and kinsman, and who has (if you like) focused the goodwill of your fatherland upon himself—this seems to hold a reasonable cause for distress. Yet you should comfort yourself by setting Reason as a spectator over the situation, rather than Passion. First, as I said, it was not possible for those who intend to remember their return home from this foreign lodging here below to make their journey back through pleasure and ease, as if traveling across level ground for horses. For one thing is the exact opposite of the other: pleasure and laziness are the opposite of the ascent to the gods. Even the highest mountains cannot be climbed without danger and labor, nor can one rise up from the depths of the body through the very channels that lead into the body—namely pleasure and laziness. For the way leads through concern and remembrance...