¹ Consider not what you are, miserable man, but what you will be; for what you are is but a moment, and what you will be is eternal. Therefore, do not be lazy with yourself. Practice now in this short time what you will possess forever. Let the desire for rewards drive away the laziness of temporal labor. Be spiritual, if you are not lazy; but if the world tempts you, see where you are fleeing to, what you are pursuing, and why you do not pursue what never flees. Why are you impatient in seeking what is worthless when you could be more precious in better things? Do not be uncertain about what is certainly better, and do not be certain about what is perishable. You see in others what others will see in you. What does it profit to delight in a shadow reflected in the water? What good is it to exult or rejoice in dreams? Yet these dreams, however long they may seem, are brief to each one. Indeed, the entire span of this world is like a single dark night, and nights themselves are but dreams.

² Therefore, wake up, O son, from the night; seek the light so that you may be seen and may see. Light a lamp and read. Beware lest you fall asleep, lest you be led astray by dreams and deceived by imagined falsehoods, believing that what is false is true, and afterward, when you wake, lament that you were deceived. Your life is like a wheel—it moves forward daily and does not wait for you. Go with it, then. Here, prepare provisions for yourself, for you are commanded to leave the land of another. Beware lest you sell what is yours. O man, you possess nothing here; in the land where you were born naked and where you will return to dust, do not sell heaven, where the eternal inheritance is—if indeed you have not lost it. But if you have lost it, sell yourself, so that you may regain it.

³ What do I mean, “sell yourself”? Sell your vices and buy life. Perhaps you ask what these are? First, sell pride, the foremost of all vices, and from its price, buy humility with joy, that you may be like Christ, who says: “Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart”, and so on. These things, once fully sold, will be sold at a lower cost and despised with less desire, for when the root of a tree is cut off, its branches are of little worth. Know what you must sell for the destruction of this flesh, so that your spirit may be saved on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ: gluttony, fornication, greed, wrath, sorrow, sloth, vain glory, and envy. It would have been better if you had lost them, even if you had gained nothing in return.