In applying your principles you must be like the pankration athlete, not like the gladiator; for the gladiator drops the sword he uses and is killed, but the other always has his hand, and needs to do nothing else than use it.
AI put this 1862 translation into today's English. Only the wording changed: each rewrite was checked against the original to keep its exact meaning.
Original translation
“In the application of thy principles thou must be like the pancratiast, not like the gladiator; for the gladiator lets fall the sword which he uses and is killed; but the other always has his hand, and needs to do nothing else than use it.”
AI put this 1862 translation into today's English. Only the wording changed: each rewrite was checked against the original to keep its exact meaning.
Original translation
“No longer talk at all about the kind of man that a good man ought to be, but be such.”
Translated by George Long, 1862
“Time is like a river made up of the events which happen, and a violent stream; for as soon as a thing has been seen, it is carried away, and another comes in its place, and this will be carried away too.”
― Marcus AureliusMeditations (Book XII, Section 9)