People look down on each other, yet they try to please each other. While they compete for worldly status and power, they sell out their better selves to one another.
They contemn one another, and yet they seek to please one another: and whilest they seek to surpass one another in worldly pomp and greatness, they most debase and prostitute themselves in their better part one to another.
Will someone look down on me? Let them worry about their reasons. My job is to make sure I never do or say anything that truly deserves contempt. Will someone hate me? That's their problem. I will be kind and loving to everyone, even to those who hate me. I'll be ready to show them their mistake, not to prove how patient I am, but honestly and gently — like Phocion did, if he wasn't just pretending. These things must come from within. The gods see inside us, not just the surface. They should find a person truly free from anger and grief. What harm can anyone else do to you, as long as you can do what fits your nature? Won't you — a person meant to serve the common good — accept what the universe is offering you right now?
Will any contemn me? let him look to that, upon what grounds he does it: my care shall be that I may never be found either doing or speaking anything that doth truly deserve contempt. Will any hate me? let him look to that. I for my part will be kind and loving unto all, and even unto him that hates me, whom-soever he be, will I be ready to show his error, not by way of exprobation or ostentation of my patience, but ingenuously and meekly: such as was that famous Phocion, if so be that he did not dissemble. For it is inwardly that these things must be: that the Gods who look inwardly, and not upon the outward appearance, may behold a man truly free from all indignation and grief. For what hurt can it be unto thee whatsoever any man else doth, as long as thou mayest do that which is proper and suitable to thine own nature? Wilt not thou (a man wholly appointed to be both what, and as the common good shall require) accept of that which is now seasonable to the nature of the universe?