Consolatio ad Apollonium

Having these things fixed in our minds, all vain and fiuitless sorrow will be superseded; the time that we have all to live being but very short, we ought to spare and

husband it, and not lay it out too prodigally upon sorrow, but rather spend it in tranquillity, deserting the mournful colors, and so take care of our own bodies, and consult the safety of those who live with us. It is requisite that we should call to mind what reasons we urged to our kinsmen and friends when they were in the like calamities, when we exhorted them to suffer these usual accidents of life with a common patience, and bear mortal things with humanity; lest being prepared with instructions for other men’s misfortunes, we reap no benefit ourselves out of the remembrance of those consolations, and so do not cure our minds by the sovereign application of reason. For in any thing a delay is less dangerous than in sorrow;, and when by every one it is so tritely said, that he that procrastinates in an affair contests with destruction, I think the character will more fitly sit upon him who defers the removing his troubles and the perturbations of his mind.