Let us be freed from this evil, let us clear it from our minds and tear it up by the roots, for if there should linger the smallest traces, it will grow again; and let us not try to regulate our anger, but be rid of it altogether — for what regulation can there be of any evil thing? Moreover, we can do it, if only we shall make the effort. And nothing will help us so much as pondering our mortality. Let each man say to himself and to his fellow-mortal: “Why do we, as if born to live forever, take delight in proclaiming our wrath and in wasting the little span of life? Why do we delight to employ for somebody’s distress and torture the days that we might devote to virtuous pleasure? Your fortunes admit no squandering and you have no spare time to waste. Why do we rush into the fray? Why do we invite trouble for ourselves? Why do we, forgetting our weakness, take up the huge burden of hate, and, easily broken as we are, rise up to break? Soon a fever or some other bodily ill will stay that war of hatred, which we now wage with such unrelenting purpose. Soon death will step in and part the fiercest pair of fighters. Why do we run riot and perturb life with our uproar? Fate looms above our heads, and scores up to our account the days as they go by, and draws ever nearer and nearer. That hour which you appoint for the death of another is perchance near your own.”