For In All Adversity Of

Contemplate The Extent And Stability Of The Heavens, And Then At Last Cease To Admire Worthless Things.

I Who Once Wrote Songs With Keen Delight Am Now By Sorrow Driven To Take Up Melancholy Measures. Wounded Muses Tell Me What I Must Write, And Elegiac Verses Bathe My Face With Real Tears. Not Even Terror Could Drive From Me These Faithful Companions Of My Long Journey. Poetry, Which Was Once The Glory Of My Happy And Flourishing Youth, Is Still My Comfort In This Misery Of My Old Age.

He Who Has Calmly Reconciled His Life To Fate, And Set Proud Death Beneath His Feet, Can Look Fortune In The Face, Unbending Both To Good And Bad; His Countenance Unconquered.

No Man Can Ever Be Secure Until He Has Been Forsaken By Fortune.

One's Virtue Is All That One Truly Has, Because It Is Not Imperiled By The Vicissitudes Of Fortune.