Meditations

by Marcus Aurelius

They despise each other, but still toady to each other: they want to win, but still grovel.

The rotten pretence of the man who says, ‘I prefer to be honest with you’! What are you on about, man? No need for this preface – the reality will show. It should be written on your forehead, immediately clear in the tone of your voice and the light of your eyes, just...

There is nothing more degrading than the friendship of wolves: avoid that above all. The good, honest, kindly man has it in his eyes, and you cannot mistake him.

Live through life in the best way you can. The power to do so is in a man’s own soul, if he is indifferent to things indifferent.

The things themselves are inert: it is we who procreate judgements about them and, as it were, imprint them on our minds – but there is no need for imprinting at all, and any accidental print can immediately be erased.

And what, anyway, is the difficulty in them? If they are in accord with nature, welcome them and you will find them easy. If they are contrary to nature, look for what accords with your own nature and go straight for that, even if it brings you no glory.

How do I regard my relation to them, and the fact that we were all born for each other: and, turning the argument, that I was born to be their leader, as the ram leads his flock and the bull his herd? But start from first principles. If not atoms, then nature governing all: if so, then the lower in the interests of the higher, and the higher for each other.

What sort of people they are at table, in bed, and so 2on. Most of all, what sort of behaviour their opinions impose on them, and their complacent pride in acting as they do.

If what they do is right, no cause for complaint. If 3wrong, this is clearly out of ignorance and not their wish. Just as no soul likes to be robbed of truth, so no soul wants to abandon the proper treatment of each individual as his worth deserves. At any rate these people resent the imputation o...

You yourself have many faults and are no different 4from them. If you do refrain from some wrongs you still have the proclivity to them, even if your restraint from wrongs like theirs is due to the fear or pu...

You are not even sure that they are doing wrong. Many 5things are done as part of a larger plan, and generally one needs to know a great deal before one can pr...

When you are high in indignation and 6perhaps losing patience, remember that human life is a mere fragment of time and...

It is not their actions which trouble us – because 7these lie in their own directing minds – but our judgements of them. Well, remove these judgements, make up your mind to dismiss your assessment of some supposed outrage, and your anger is gone. And ...

The greater grief comes from the consequent anger 8and pain, rather than the original causes of our anger and pain.

Kindness is invincible – if it is sincere, not fawning or 9pretence. What can the most aggressive man do to you if you continue to be kind to him? If, as opportunity arises, you gently admonish him and take your time to re-educate him at the very moment when he is trying to do you harm?

show him delicately how things are, making the general point that bees do not act like this, or any other creatures of gregarious nature. But your advice must not be ironic or critical. It should be affectionate, with no hurt feelings, not a lecture or a demonstration to impress others, but the way you would talk to someone by himself irrespective of company.

Keep these nine points in your mind – take them as gifts from 10the Muses! – and begin at long last to be a human being, while life remains. You should avoid flattery as much as anger in your dealings with them: both are against the common good and lead to harm.

there is nothing manly in being angry, but a gentle calm is both more human and therefore more virile. It is the gentle who have strength, sinew, and courage – not the indignant and complaining. The closer to control of emotion, the closer to power. Anger is as much a si...

it is madness to expect bad men to do no wrong: that is asking for the impossible. But it is cruel tyranny to allow them such behaviour to others while demanding that they do no wrong to you.

There are four particular corruptions of the directing mind for which you must keep constant watch, and eliminate them whenever you detect them, in each case applying one of these formulas: ‘This mental image is superfluous’; ‘This could weaken the bond of community’; ‘This would not be yourself speaking’ (to say what you do not feel should be regarded as the height of contradiction). And the fourth case for self-reproach is that in which the more divine part of you loses the contest and bows to the lower, mortal part, the body and its gross pleasures.

is it not strange that it is only your intelligent part which 2rebels and complains of the place given it? And yet there is nothing forced on it, only what accords with its own nature.

Any movement towards acts of injustice or self-indulgence, to anger, pain, or fear is nothing less than apostasy from nature. Further, whenever the directing mind feels resentment at any happening, that too is desertion of its proper post.

‘The man without one and the same aim in life cannot himself stay one and the same throughout his life.’ The maxim is incomplete unless you add what sort of aim that should be. Judgements vary of the whole range of various things taken by the majority to be goods in one way or another, but only one category commands a universal judgement, and that is the good of the community. It follows that the aim we should set ourselves is a social aim, the benefit of our fellow citizens. A man directing all his own impulses to this end will be consistent in all his actions,

The hill mouse and the house mouse – and the frightened scurrying of the house mouse.

Socrates used to call the popular beliefs ‘bogies’, things to frighten children with.

At their festivals the Spartans would put seats for visitors in the shade, and sit thems...

Socrates to Perdiccas of Macedon, declining the invitation to visit him: ‘to avoid dying the worst of deaths’ – that is, the inabilit...

one should continually keep in mind one of those who followed the path of virtue in earlier times.

‘Look at the sky at dawn’ – to remind ourselves of the constancy of those heavenly bodies, their perpetual round of their own duty, their order, their purity, and their nakedness. No star wears a veil.

In writing and reading you must learn before you can teach. Yet more so in life.

‘They will pour scorn on virtue and sting with their abuse.’

Only a madman looks for figs in winter: just as mad to hope for a child when the time of this gift is past.

Epictetus used to say that when you kiss your child you should say to yourself: ‘Tomorrow you may be dead.’ But these are ominous words! ‘No,’ he replies, ‘nothing is ominous which points to a natural process. Otherwi...

Grapes unripe, ripened, raisined: all changes, not into nonexistence, but ...

‘No thief can steal y...

‘We must discover an art of assent, and in the whole field of our impulses take care to ensure that each impulse is conditional, has a social purpose, and is proportionate to the value of its goal. We must keep absolutely clear of personal motivation, and at the same time show no disinclination to anything outside our immediate control.’

this is not a contest for a trivial prize: at issue is madness or sanity.’

‘What do you want to have? The souls of rational or irrational beings?’ ‘Rational.’ ‘What sort of rational beings? The pure or the lower?’ ‘The pure.’ ‘Why then don’t you aim for that?’ ‘Because we have it.’ ‘Why then your fighting and disagreements?’

That is, if you leave all the past behind, entrust the future to Providence, and direct the present solely to reverence and justice. To reverence, so that you come to love your given lot: it was Nature that brought it to you and you to it. To justice, so that you are open and direct in word and action, speaking the truth, observing law and proportion in all you do. You should let nothing stand in your way – not the iniquity of others, not what anyone else thinks or says, still less any sensation of this poor flesh that has accreted round you: the afflicted part must see to its own concern.

when you finally come close to your exit, you have 2left all else behind and value only your directing mind and the divinity within you, if your fear is not that you will cease to live, but that you never started a life in accordance with nature, then you will be a man worthy of the universe that gave you birth.

God sees all our directing minds stripped of their material vessels, their husks and their dross. His contact is only between his own intelligence and what has flowed from him into these channels of ours.

There are three things in your composition: body, breath, and mind. The first two are yours to the extent that you must take care for them, but only the third is in the full sense your own.

if you separate from yourself – that is, from your mind – all that others say or do, all that you yourself have said or done, all that troubles you for the future, all that your encasing body and associate breath bring on you without your choice, all that is whirled round in the external vortex encircling us, so that your power of mind, transcending now all contingent ties, can exist on its own, pure and liberated, doing what is just, willing what happens to it, and saying what is true; if, as I say, you 2separate from this directing mind of yours the baggage of passion, time future and time past, and make yourself like Empedocles’ ‘perfect round rejoicing in the solitude it enjoys’, and seek only to perfect this life you are living in the present, you will be able at least to live out the time remaining before your death calmly, kindly, and at peace with the god inside you.

I have often wondered how it is that everyone loves himself more than anyone else, but rates his own judgement of himself below that of others.

Practise even what you have despaired of mastering. For lack of practice the left hand is awkward for most tasks, but has a stronger grip on the bridle than the right – it is practised in this.

Look at causation stripped bare of its covers; look at the ulterior reference of any action. Consider, what is pain? What is pleasure? What is death? What is fame? Who is not himself the cause of his own unrest? Reflect how no one is hampered by any other; and that all is as thinking makes it so.

See things for what they are, analysing into material, cause, and reference.

What liberty man has to do only what god will approve, and to welcome all that god assigns him in the course of nature!

Do not blame the gods: they do no wrong, willed or unwilled. Do not blame men either: all their wrongs are unwilled. No one, then, should be blamed.

How absurd – and a complete stranger to the world – is the man surprised at any aspect ...