Meditations

by Marcus Aurelius

On pain. Unbearable pain carries us off: chronic pain can be borne. The mind preserves its own serenity by withdrawal, and the directing reason is not impaired by pain.

On fame. Look at their minds, the nature of their thought and what they seek or avoid. And see how, just as drifting sands constantly overlay the previous sand, so in our lives what we once did is very quickly covered over by subsequent layers.

do you think that this human life will seem of great importance? “Impossible,” he said. So such a man will not think there is anything fearful in death either? “Certainly not”.’

‘A king’s lot: to do good and be damned.’

‘Mere things, brute facts, should not provoke your rage: They have no mind to care.

‘May you give joy to the immortal gods, and joy to us.’

‘Ripe ears of corn are reaped, and so are lives: One stands, another falls.’

‘If I and my two sons are now no more The gods’ concern, this too will have its cause.’

‘For good and right stand on my side.’

‘Don’t join in mourning, or in ecstasy.’

“You are mistaken, my friend, if you think that a man of any worth at all should take into account the risk of life or death, and not have as his sole consideration in any action whether he is doing right or wrong, the act of a good man or a bad”.’

Whatever position a man has taken up in his own best judgement, or is assigned by his commander, there, it seems to me, he should stay and face the danger, giving no thought to death or anything else before dishonour.

his thought should be on this further question, how best to live his life in the time he has to be alive.’

Observe the movement of the stars as if you were running their courses with them, and let your mind constantly dwell on the changes of the elements into each other. Such imaginings wash away the filth of life on the ground.

looking down on them from some point high above – flocks, armies, farms, weddings, divorces, births, deaths, the hubbub of the law-courts, desert places, various foreign nations, festivals, funerals, markets; all the medley of the world and the ordered conjunction of opposites.

for the study of human life forty years are as good as ten thousand: what more will you see?

Again: ‘What is born of earth goes back to earth: but the growth from heavenly seed returns whence it came, to heaven.’ Or else this: a dissolution of the nexus of atoms, and senseless molecules likewise dispersed.

‘With special food or drink, or sorcery, Seeking a channel from the stream of death.’ ‘The wind that blows from god we must endure, and labour uncomplaining.’

‘Better at throwing his man’: but not more public-spirited, or more decent, or more disciplined to circumstance, or more tolerant of neighbours’ faults.

because where there is the possibility of benefit from an action which moves along the proper path, following our own human constitution, there should be no lurking fear of any harm.

honour god in contentment with your present circumstance, to treat the men who are your present company with justice, and to lavish thought on every present impression in your mind, so that nothing slips in past your understanding.

Do not look around at the directing minds of other people, but keep looking straight ahead to where nature is leading you – both universal nature, in what happens to you, and your own nature, in what you must do yourself.

the main principle in man’s constitution is the social. The second is resistance to the promptings of the flesh. It is the specific property of rational and intelligent activity to isolate itself and never be influenced by the activity of the senses or impulses: both these are of the animal order, and it is the aim of intelligent activity to be sovereign over them and never yield them the mastery – and rightly so, as it is the very nature of intelligence to put all these things to its own use.

The third element in a rational constitution is a judgement unhurried and undeceived.

Imagine you were now dead, or had not lived before this moment. Now view the rest of your life as a bonus, and live it as nature directs.

Love only what falls your way and is fated for you. What could suit you more than that?

In every contingency keep in your mind’s eye those who had the same experience before, and reacted with vexation, disbelief, or complaint. So where are they now? Nowhere. Well then, do you want to act like them? Why not leave the moods and shifts of others to the shifting and the shifted, and for yourself concentrate wholly on how to make use of these contingencies? You will then use them well, and...

the action is important, the context...

Dig inside yourself. Inside there is a spring of goodness ready to gush at any mom...

See within yourself, and you will see what nature intended you to be.

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, in that it stands ready for what comes and is not thrown by the unforeseen.

When you look into the sources of their judgement and impulse, you will not blame their unwitting error, nor will you feel the need of their endorsement.

‘No soul’, says Plato, ‘likes to be robbed of truth’ – and the same holds of justice, moderation, kindness, and all such virtues. Essential that you should keep this constantly in your mind: this will make you more gentle to all.

Whenever you suffer pain, have ready to hand the thought that pain is not a moral evil and does not harm your governing intelligence: pain can do no damage eit...

‘Pain is neither unendurable nor unending, as long as you remember its limits and do not exagger...

when you find yourself complaining of any of these, say to yourself, ‘You are giving in to pain.’

Take care that you never treat the misanthropic as they treat mankind.

not enough that Socrates died a more glorious death, that he argued more skilfully with the sophists, that he showed greater endurance in spending a whole night out in the frost, that he was braver in his decision to refuse the order to arrest Leon of Salamis, that he ‘swaggered in the streets’ (though one could well question if this last is true). No, what we need to investigate is the nature of Socrates’ soul. We should ask whether he was able to be content with a life of justice shown to men and piety to the gods; neither condemning all vice wholesale nor yet toadying to anyone’s ignorance; not regarding anything allotted to him by the Whole as misplaced in him or a crushing burden to endure; not lending his mind to share the poor passions of the flesh.

The way nature has blended you into the compound whole does not prevent you drawing a boundary around yourself and keeping what is your own in your own control.

just because you have given up hope of becoming a philosopher or a scientist, you should therefore despair of a free spirit, integrity, social conscience, obedience to god. It is wholly possible to become a ‘divine man’ without anybody’s recognition.

Live through your life without pressure and in the utmost contentment, even if all are clamouring what they will against you, even if wild beasts are tearing off the limbs of this poor lump of a body accreted round you. What in all this prevents the mind from preserving itself in tranquillity, in true judgement of circumstance and readiness to use any event submitted to it?

So that Judgement says to Circumstance: ‘This is what you really are, however different you may conventionally appear’; and Ready Use says to Event: ‘I was looking for you. I always take the present moment as raw material for the exercise of r...

to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretence.

The gods, who are free from death, do not resent their need throughout all the length of eternity to tolerate in such numbers such worthless creatures as men: what is more, they even care for them in all sorts of ways. And do you, with the merest time before your own exit, refuse to make the effort – and that when you are one of the worthless creatures yourself?

It is ridiculous not to escape from one’s own vices, which is possible, while trying to escape the vices ...

Whatever the rational and social faculty finds neither intelligent nor to the common good it judges, wit...

When you have done good and another has benefited, why do you still look, as fools do, for a third thing besides – cr...

No one tires of receiving benefit: and action in accordance with natur...

The nature of the Whole set itself to create a universe. So now either everything that comes into being springs from that as logical consequence, or else even the primary aims to which the directing mind of the universe sets its own impulse are irrational. Reminding yourself of this will help you to face much with greater tranquillity.

abandon any concern for reputation, and be satisfied if you can just live the rest of your life, whatever remains, in the way your nature wishes.

You know from experience that in all your wanderings you have nowhere found the good life – not in logic, not in wealth, not in glory, not in indulgence: nowhere. Where then is it to be found? In doing what man’s nature requires. And how is he to do this? By having principles to govern his impulses and actions. What are these principles? Those of good and evil – the belief that nothing is good for a human being which does not make him just, self-controlled, brave, and free: and nothing evil which does not make him the opposite of these.