1It is remarkable how, for single days in the city, an account either balances or seems to balance, but for several days taken together it does not. 2For if you ask anyone, 'What did you do today?', he would answer: 'I attended a coming-of-age ceremony, I went to a betrothal or a wedding, one man asked me to witness his will, another to support him in court, another to sit on his council.' 3These things seem necessary on the day you do them, but the same things seem empty if you reflect that you have done them every day, and much more so when you have gone into retreat. 3For then the recollection comes over you: 'How many days I have wasted on what dull things!' 4This is what happens to me after I am at my Laurentine house and am either reading something or writing or even attending to my body, by whose props the mind is supported.
5I hear nothing that I regret having heard, I say nothing that I regret having said; 5no one in my company carps at anyone with malicious talk, I myself find fault with no one, except, that is, myself when I write poorly; 5I am troubled by no hope, no fear, disturbed by no rumours: I talk only with myself and with my books. 6O upright and genuine life! 6O sweet and honourable leisure, finer almost than any business! 6O sea, O shore, true and secret home of the Muses, how much you discover, how much you dictate! 7So you too, as soon as there is an opportunity, leave that din and empty bustle and all those quite pointless labours, and give yourself to study or to leisure.
8For it is better, as our friend Atilius said most learnedly and at the same time most wittily, to be at leisure than to be doing nothing. 8Farewell.