Shrink your whole life down to the size of one single action. If in each thing you do, you perform what is right to the best of your ability, let that be enough. And who can stop you from doing what is right?
Contract thy whole life to the measure and proportion of one single action. And if in every particular action thou dost perform what is fitting to the utmost of thy power, let it suffice thee. And who can hinder thee, but that thou mayest perform what is fitting?
Look at Emperor Augustus and his whole court. His wife, his daughter, his nephews, his sons-in-law, his sister, Agrippa, his relatives, his servants, his friends. Areus, Maecenas, his fortune-tellers and animal sacrificers — death took them all. Now think about everyone who came after Augustus. Did death treat them any differently? They lived grand lives, but death came for them just like it comes for any ordinary person.
Consider how entire family lines die out, like the Pompeys. You see it written on tombstones: "He was the last of his family." Think of all the care his ancestors took to leave behind an heir. Yet in the end, someone always has to be the last one. Here again — the death of an entire bloodline.
Augustus his court; his wife, his daughter, his nephews, his sons-in-law his sister, Agrippa, his kinsmen, his domestics, his friends; Areus, Mæcenas, his slayers of beasts for sacrifice and divination: there thou hast the death of a whole court together. Proceed now on to the rest that have been since that of Augustus. Hath death dwelt with them otherwise, though so many and so stately whilst they lived, than it doth use to deal with any one particular man? Consider now the death of a whole kindred and family, as of that of the Pompeys, as that also that useth to be written upon some monuments, HE WAS THE LAST OF HIS OWN KINDRED. O what care did his predecessors take, that they might leave a successor, yet behold at last one or other must of necessity be THE LAST. Here again therefore consider the death of a whole kindred.