At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed

In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present: I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world? Or have I been made for this, to lie in the bed-clothes and keep myself warm? — But this is more pleasant. — Dost thou exist then to take thy pleasure, and not at all for action or exertion? Dost thou not see the little plants, the little birds, the ants, the spiders, the bees working together to put in order their several parts of the universe? And art thou unwilling to do the work of a human being, and dost thou not make haste to do that which is according to thy nature?

Marcus is not arguing himself into virtue through eloquence. He is refusing the comfortable version of the morning by naming, in plain terms, what he is for. The passage is the practical anchor for any morning-preparation practice — the recognition that the resistance is the test, and the test is small, and the work is what one was brought into the world to do. It is also the passage that has rescued the procrastinating reader from the bed more often than any other in the corpus.