Meditations

by Marcus Aurelius

It would be wrong for anything to stand between you and attaining goodness—as a rational being and a citizen.

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.

Everything fades so quickly, turns into legend, and soon oblivion covers it.

Then what should we work for? Only this: proper understanding; unselfish action; truthful speech.

You don’t love yourself enough. Or you’d love your nature too, and what it demands of you.

Prayer of the Athenians: Zeus, rain down, rain down On the land and fields of Athens. Either no prayers at all—or one as straightforward as that.

You can lead an untroubled life provided you can grow, can think and act systematically.

I was once a fortunate man but at some point fortune abandoned me. But true good fortune is what you make for yourself. Good fortune: good character, good intentions, and good actions.

Pride is a master of deception: when you think you’re occupied in the weightiest business, that’s when he has you in his spell.

What’s left for us to prize? I think it’s this: to do (and not do) what we were designed for.

It’s quite possible to be a good man without anyone realizing it.

If it’s in your control, why do you do it? If it’s in someone else’s, then who are you blaming? Atoms? The gods? Stupid either way.

Joy for humans lies in human actions. Human actions: kindness to others, contempt for the senses, the interrogation of appearances, observation of nature and of events in nature.

everything you believe is meaningless to those you leave behind.

you act as if things were eternal—the way you fear and long for them….

If you’d only let go of the past, entrust the future to Providence, and guide the present toward reverence and justice.