O soul: What a vast difference there is between the one who exits something after having experienced it, tasted it, and renounced it—and the one who enters into it, desiring to experience and taste it!

O soul: The fighter in war longs to exit it due to the distress of combat and the weight of the armor; yet he who has never witnessed a war longs to encounter and taste it. For if you say, O soul, that you have reached your goal through what you have experienced, then return now to your ultimate end—that state in which you once were and have since forgotten.

O soul: Whenever you desire the greatest lesson, turn toward the contemplation of the Eternal Being—the Everlasting, the Pre-eternal in purpose, the Perpetual in extent. For there is no limit to the extent of a perpetual thing. He is the Principle of all things at their emergence and their refuge at their decline; He is the Expander of things and their Contractor, their Originator and their Restorer, the one who abases them and the one who exalts them, their Creator and their Transformer—whole after whole, and branch after branch.

O soul: Contemplate the particular things: how their powers weaken and fail to remain or endure, thus they are effaced from their existence and return to their universals. Likewise, universal things fall short of equaling the Pre-eternal, Solitary Root in endurance; they are effaced by the dissolution of their powers and the ending of their spans all at once.