When you clearly understand what's up to you and what's not, what stops you from living with a light heart? What stops you from handling whatever comes your way and accepting what's already happened? You want me to handle poverty? Bring it on. You'll see what real poverty looks like when someone knows how to be poor with dignity. You want me to have power? Give me power — and all the headaches that come with it. What about exile? Wherever I go, I'll be fine. I was fine here not because of the place, but because of how I think. I'll take that thinking with me. No one can steal my thoughts from me. My opinions are mine alone. They can't be taken away. As long as I have them, I'm satisfied — no matter where I am or what I'm doing. But now it's time to die. Why do you say 'to die'? Don't make it dramatic. Just call it what it is.
What hinders a man, who has clearly separated (comprehended) these things, from living with a light heart and bearing easily the reins, quietly expecting everything which can happen, and enduring that which has already happened? Would you have me to bear poverty? Come and you will know what poverty is when it has found one who can act well the part of a poor man. Would you have me to possess power? Let me have power, and also the trouble of it. Well, banishment? Wherever I shall go, there it will be well with me; for here also where I am, it was not because of the place that it was well with me, but because of my opinions which I shall carry off with me, for neither can any man deprive me of them; but my opinions alone are mine and they cannot be taken from me, and I am satisfied while I have them, wherever I may be and whatever I am doing. But now it is time to die. Why do you say to die? Make no tragedy show of the thing, but speak of it as it is.