Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
You ask how this reached me, who told me what you had told no one you were thinking. The one who knows the most: rumor. "What then," you say, "am I important enough to stir up rumor?" You shouldn't measure yourself by this place you're looking back toward; look instead at the place where you're actually living. Whatever stands out among its neighbors is great right where it stands out; for greatness has no fixed measure -- comparison either raises it or brings it down. A boat that's large on a river is tiny on the sea; a rudder that's large for one ship is small for another. You, right now, in your province, however much you may look down on yourself, are a great man. What you do, how you dine, how you sleep -- people ask, people know: all the more carefully must you live. But count yourself truly fortunate only when you can live out in the open, when your own walls shelter you rather than hide you -- walls which, for the most part, we think we've put up around ourselves not to live more safely but to sin more secretly. I'll tell you something from which you can judge our morals: you'll hardly find a man who can live with his door open. It's our conscience, not our pride, that has posted doorkeepers: we live in such a way that to be caught unawares is to be caught in the act. But what good does it do to hide yourself away, to avoid the eyes and ears of other people? A good conscience welcomes a crowd; a bad one is anxious and uneasy even in solitude. If what you're doing is honorable, let everyone know it; if shameful, what does it matter that no one knows, so long as you know? How wretched you are if you think nothing of that witness! Farewell.