17. Do not act as if thou wert going to live ten thousand years. Death
hangs over thee. While thou livest, while it is in thy power, be good.

18. How much trouble he avoids who does not look to see what his neighbor
says or does or thinks, but only to what he does himself, that it may be
just and pure; or, as Agathon says, look not round at the depraved morals
of others, but run straight along the line without deviating from it.

19. He who has a vehement desire for posthumous fame does not consider
that every one of those who remember him will himself also die very soon;
then again also they who have succeeded them, until the whole remembrance
shall have been extinguished as it is transmitted through men who
foolishly admire and perish. But suppose that those who will remember are
even immortal, and that the remembrance will be immortal, what then is
this to thee? And I say not what is it to the dead, but what is it to the
living. What is praise, except indeed so far as it has a certain utility?
For thou now rejectest unseasonably the gift of nature, clinging to
something else....

20. Everything which is in any way beautiful is beautiful in itself, and
terminates in itself, not having praise as part of itself. Neither worse
then nor better is a thing made by being praised. I affirm this also of
the things which are called beautiful by the vulgar, for example,
material things and works of art. That which is really beautiful has no
need of anything; not more than law, not more than truth, not more than
benevolence or modesty. Which of these things is beautiful because it is
praised, or spoiled by being blamed? Is such a thing as an emerald made
worse than it was, if it is not praised? or gold, ivory, purple, a lyre,
a little knife, a flower, a shrub?