How much longer will you wait to demand the best from yourself? How much longer will you ignore what reason tells you? You've learned the philosophical principles you need. You've studied them. So what master are you waiting for as an excuse to keep delaying your self-improvement? You're not a child anymore. You're a grown adult. If you keep being lazy and putting things off — adding delay to delay, plan to plan, setting date after date when you'll finally work on yourself — you'll quietly accomplish nothing. You'll live and die with an ordinary mind.
How long, then, will you delay to demand of yourself the noblest improvements, and in no instance to transgress the judgments of reason? You have received the philosophic principles with which you ought to be conversant; and you have been conversant with them. For what other master, then, do you wait as an excuse for this delay in self-reformation? You are no longer a boy but a grown man. If, therefore, you will be negligent and slothful, and always add procrastination to procrastination, purpose to purpose, and fix day after day in which you will attend to yourself, you will insensibly continue to accomplish nothing and, living and dying, remain of vulgar mind.