Meditations

by Marcus Aurelius

If the dog refuses to run along with the wagon he will be dragged by it, yet the choice remains his: to run or be dragged. In the same way, humans are responsible for their choices and actions, even though these have been anticipated by the logos and form part of its plan.

that there is a limit to the time assigned you, and if you don’t use it to free yourself it will be gone and will never return.

5. Concentrate every minute like a Roman—like a man—on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can—if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable.

11. You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.

i. that everything has always been the same, and keeps recurring, and it makes no difference whether you see the same things recur in a hundred years or two hundred, or in an infinite period; ii. that the longest-lived and those who will die soonest lose the same thing. The present is all that they can give up, since that is all you have, and what you do not have, you cannot lose.

“Everything is just an impression.” —Monimus the Cynic.

So we need to hurry. Not just because we move daily closer to death but also because our understanding—our grasp of the world—may be gone before we get there.

Hippocrates cured many illnesses—and then fell ill and died. The Chaldaeans predicted the deaths of many others; in due course their own hour arrived. Alexander, Pompey, Caesar—who utterly destroyed so many cities, cut down so many thousand foot and horse in battle—they too departed this life.

Don’t waste the rest of your time here worrying about other people—unless it affects the common good. It will keep you from doing anything useful. You’ll be too preoccupied with what so-and-so is doing, and why, and what they’re saying, and what they’re thinking, and what they’re up to, and all the other things that throw you off and keep you from focusing on your own mind.

the struggle not to be overwhelmed by anything that happens.

To stand up straight—not straightened.

Your ability to control your thoughts—treat it with respect. It’s all that protects your mind from false perceptions—false to your nature, and that of all rational beings.

Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see.

The span we live is small—small as the corner of the earth in which we live it.

so we can see what it really is: its substance. Stripped bare. As a whole. Unmodified. And to call it by its name—the thing itself and its components, to which it will eventually return.

If you do the job in a principled way, with diligence, energy and patience, if you keep yourself free of distractions, and keep the spirit inside you undamaged, as if you might have to give it back at any moment— If you can embrace this without fear or expectation—can find fulfillment in what you’re doing now, as Nature intended, and in superhuman truthfulness (every word, every utterance)—then your life will be happy. No one can prevent that.

Nothing earthly succeeds by ignoring heaven, nothing heavenly by ignoring the earth.

Sprint for the finish. Write off your hopes, and if your well-being matters to you, be your own savior while you can.

No random actions, none not based on underlying principles.

Which is idiotic: you can get away from it anytime you like. By going within. Nowhere you can go is more peaceful—more free of interruptions—than your own soul.

that rational beings exist for one another; that doing what’s right sometimes requires patience; that no one does the wrong thing deliberately; and the number of people who have feuded and envied and hated and fought and died and been buried.

Or is it your reputation that’s bothering you? But look at how soon we’re all forgotten.

The whole earth a point in space—and most of it uninhabited. How many people there will be to admire you, and who they are.

That things have no hold on the soul. They stand there unmoving, outside it. Disturbance comes only from within—from our own perceptions.

“The world is nothing but change. Our life is only perception.”

(Anyway, before very long you’ll both be dead—dead and soon forgotten.)

Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been.

It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character. Otherwise it cannot ...

It was for the best. So Nature had no choic...

Not to live as if you had endless years ahead of you. Death overshadows you. While you’re alive and able—be good.

To the world: Your harmony is mine. Whatever time you choose is the right time. Not late, not early. To nature: What the turn of your seasons brings me falls like ripe fruit. All things are born from you, exist in you, return to you. The poet says “dear city of Cecrops …” Can’t you bring yourself to say “of Zeus”?

Because most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time, and more tranquillity. Ask yourself at every moment, “Is this necessary?”

Something happens to you. Good. It was meant for you by nature, woven into the pattern from the beginning. Life is short. That’s all there is to say. Get what you can from the present—thoughtfully, justly.

Poor: (adj.) requiring others; not having the necessities of life in one’s own possession.

You’re better off not giving the small things more time than they deserve.

Look into their minds, at what the wise do and what they don’t.

Nothing that goes on in anyone else’s mind can harm you. Nor can the shifts and changes in the world around you. —Then where is harm to be found? In your capacity to see it. Stop doing that and everything will be fine.

Let the part of you that makes that judgment keep quiet even if the body it’s attached to is stabbed or burnt, or stinkin...

Or to put it another way: It needs to realize that what happens to everyone—bad and good alike—is neither good nor bad. That what happens in every life—lived natur...

Time is a river, a violent current of events, glimpsed once and already carried past us, and another follows and is gone.

“When earth dies, it becomes water; water, air; air, fire; and back to the beginning.” “Those who have forgotten where the road leads.” “They are at odds with what is all around them”—the

“or of children copying their parents”—doing and saying only what we have been told.

Suppose that a god announced that you were going to die tomorrow “or the day after.” Unless you were a complete coward you wouldn’t kick up a fuss about which day it was—what difference could it make?

Now recognize that the difference between years from now and tomor...

No. It’s fortunate that this has happened and I’ve remained unharmed by it—not shattered by the present or frightened of the future.

So remember this principle when something threatens to cause you pain: the thing itself was no misfortune at all; to endure it and prevail is great good fortune.

Our lifetime is so brief. And to live it out in these circumstances, among these people, in this body? Nothing to get excited about. Consider the abyss of time past, the infinite future. Three days of life or three generations: what’s the difference?

So you were born to feel “nice”? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can?

Don’t be put off by other people’s comments and criticism. If it’s right to say or do it, then it’s the right thing for you to do or say.

Some people, when they do someone a favor, are always looking for a chance to call it in. And some aren’t, but they’re still aware of it—still regard it as a debt. But others don’t even do that. They’re like a vine that produces grapes without looking for anything in return.