Meditations

by Marcus Aurelius

But to get back up when you fail, to celebrate behaving like a human—however imperfectly—and fully embrace the pursuit that you’ve embarked on.

The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts.

What stands in the way becomes the way.

Show the offender where he went wrong.

24. Remember: Matter. How tiny your share of it. Time. How brief and fleeting your allotment of it. Fate. How small a role you play in it.

25. So other people hurt me? That’s their problem. Their character and actions are not mine.

Neither player-king nor prostitute.

35. If: this evil is not of my doing, nor the result of it, and the community is not endangered, why should it bother me?

—I know, but it was important to them. And so you have to be an idiot as well?

Good fortune: good character, good intentions, and good actions.

The best revenge is not to be like that.

lay them bare and see how pointless they are, to strip away the legend that encrusts them.

avoid all selfishness and illogic, and to work with others to achieve that goal.

Not to assume it’s impossible because you find it hard. But to recognize that if it’s humanly possible, you can do it too.

It’s the truth I’m after, and the truth never harmed anyone.

It’s normal to feel pain in your hands and feet, if you’re using your feet as feet and your hands as hands. And for a human being to feel stress is normal—if he’s living a normal human life. And if it’s normal, how can it be bad?

The lion’s jaws, the poisonous substances, and every harmful thing—from thorns to mud … are by-products of the good and beautiful. So don’t look at them as alien to what you revere, but focus on the source that all things spring from.

If you’ve seen the present then you’ve seen everything—as it’s been since the beginning, as it will be forever. The same substance, the same form. All of it.

38. Keep reminding yourself of the way things are connected, of their relatedness. All things are implicated in one another and in sympathy with each other. This event is the consequence of some other one. Things push...

When you need encouragement, think of the qualities the people around you have: this one’s energy, that one’s modesty, another’s generosity, and so on.

You don’t have to turn this into something. It doesn’t have to upset you. Things can’t shape our decisions by themselves.

Practice really hearing what people say. Do your best to get inside their minds.

All those people who came into the world with me and have already left it.

Don’t be ashamed to need help. Like a soldier storming a wall, you have a mission to accomplish. And if you’ve been wounded and you need a comrade to pull you up? So what?

Frightened of change? But what can exist without it?

22. To feel affection for people even when they make mistakes is uniquely human. You can do it, if you simply recognize: that they’re human too, that they act out of ignorance, against their will, and that you’ll both be dead before long.

25. Before long, nature, which controls it all, will alter everything you see and use it as material for something else—over and over again. So that the world is continually renewed.

Analyze what exists, break it all down: material and cause.

Care for other human beings.

all are relative,” it’s been said, “and in reality only atoms.” It’s enough to remember the first half: “all are relative.” † Which is little enough.

48. [Plato has it right.] If you want to talk about people, you need to look down on the earth from above. Herds, armies, farms; weddings, divorces, births, deaths; noisy courtrooms, desert places; all the foreign peoples; holidays, days of mourning, market days … all mixed together, a harmony of opposites.

to accept this event with humility to treat this person as he should be treated to approach this thought with care, so that nothing irrational creeps in.

Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what’s left and live it properly.

you don’t need much to live happily. And just because you’ve abandoned your hopes of becoming a great thinker or scientist, don’t give up on attaining freedom, achieving humility, serving others, obeying God.

And you—on the verge of death—you still refuse to care for them, although you’re one of them yourself.

You’ve given aid and they’ve received it. And yet, like an idiot, you keep holding out for more: to be credited with a Good Deed, to be repaid in kind. Why?

Now forget what they think of you. Be satisfied if you can live the rest of your life, however short, as your nature demands.

Those to do with good and evil. That nothing is good except what leads to fairness, and self-control, and courage, and free will. And nothing bad except what does the opposite.

For every action, ask: How does it affect me? Could I change my mind about it? But soon I’ll be dead, and the slate’s empty. So this is the only question: Is it the action of a responsible being, part of society, and subject to the same decrees as God?

No time for reading. For controlling your arrogance, yes. For overcoming pain and pleasure, yes. For outgrowing ambition, yes. For not feeling anger at stupid and unpleasant people—even for caring about them—for that, yes.

Apply them constantly, to everything that happens: Physics. Ethics. Logic.

Remember that to change your mind and to accept correction are free acts too.

Turn it inside out: What is it like? What is it like old? Or sick? Or selling itself on the streets?

Stick to what’s in front of you—idea,

This is what you deserve. You could be good today. But instead you choose tomorrow.

30. To speak to the Senate—or anyone—in the right tone, without being overbearing. To choose the right words.

You have to assemble your life yourself—action by action. And be satisfied if each one achieves its goal, as far as it can. No one can keep that from happening.

Don’t let your imagination be crushed by life as a whole. Don’t try to picture everything bad that could possibly happen. Stick

“Why is this so unbearable? Why can’t I endure it?” You’ll be embarrassed to answer.

Give yourself a gift: the present moment.