Marcus Aurelius - Meditations (180 AD)

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Nature has had regard in everything no less to the end than to the beginning and the continuance, just like a man who throws up a ball. What good is it then for the ball to be thrown up, or harm for it to come down... what good is it to the bubble while it holds together, or what harm when it is burst?

Marcus Aurelius
Look to the essence of a thing, whether it be a point of doctrine, of practice, or of interpretation.

Marcus Aurelius
If a man is mistaken, instruct him kindly and show him his error. But if thou art not able, blame thyself, or blame not even thyself.

Marcus Aurelius
Very little is needed to make a happy life.

Marcus Aurelius
So you know how things stand. Now forget what they think of you. Be satisfied if you can live the rest of your life, however short, as your nature demands. Focus on that, and don't let anything distract you. You've wandered all over and finally realized that you never found what you were after: how to live. Not in syllogisms, not in money, or fame, or self-indulgence. Nowhere.

Marcus Aurelius
Live as on a mountain.... Let men see, let them know a real man who lives according to nature. If they cannot endure him, let them kill him. For that is better than to live thus.

Marcus Aurelius
Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.

Marcus Aurelius
Every soul, the philosopher says, is involuntarily deprived of truth; consequently in the same way it is deprived of justice and temperance and benevolence and everything of the kind. It is most necessary to keep this in mind, for thus thou wilt be more gentle towards all.

Marcus Aurelius
Remember that no man loses other life than that which he lives, nor lives other than that which he loses.

Marcus Aurelius
Wipe out the imagination. Stop pulling the strings. Confine thyself to the present.... Divide and distribute every object into the causal [formal] and the material.... Let the wrong which is done by a man stay there where the wrong was done.

Marcus Aurelius
On the occasion of every act ask thyself, How is this with respect to me? Shall I repent of it? A little time and I am dead, and all is gone.

Marcus Aurelius
How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.

Marcus Aurelius
Thou sufferest justly: for thou choosest rather to become good tomorrow than to be good today.

Marcus Aurelius
Keep constantly in mind in how many things you yourself have witnessed changes already. The universe is change, life is understanding.

Marcus Aurelius
Understand however that every man is worth just so much as the things are worth about which he busies himself.

Marcus Aurelius
He who fears death either fears to lose all sensation or fears new sensations. In reality, you will either feel nothing at all, and therefore nothing evil, or else, if you can feel any sensations, you will be a new creature, and so will not have ceased to have life.

Marcus Aurelius
It is not fit that I should give myself pain, for I have never intentionally given pain even to another.

Marcus Aurelius
In a sense, people are our proper occupation. Our job is to do them good and put up with them. But when they obstruct our proper tasks, they become irrelevant to us—like sun, wind, and animals. Our actions may be impeded by them, but there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.

Marcus Aurelius
The nature of the universe is the nature of things that are. Now, things that are have kinship with things that are from the beginning. Further, this nature is styled Truth; and it is the first cause of all that is true.

Marcus Aurelius
Accustom yourself not to be disregarding of what someone else has to say: as far as possible enter into the mind of the speaker.

Marcus Aurelius
Let it be your constant method to look into the design of people's actions, and see what they would be at, as often as it is practicable; and to make this custom the more significant, practice it first upon yourself.

Marcus Aurelius
Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

Marcus Aurelius
If it is not right, do not do it, if it is not true, do not say it. For let thy efforts be —

Marcus Aurelius
Whatever befalls you was prepared for you beforehand from eternity, and the thread of causes was spinning from everlasting both your existence and this which befalls you.

Marcus Aurelius
Be not unwilling in what thou doest, neither selfish nor unadvised nor obstinate; let not over-refinement deck out thy thought; be not wordy nor a busybody.

Marcus Aurelius
In the morning, when thou art sluggish at rousing thee, let this thought be present; I am rising to a man's work.

Marcus Aurelius
Thou mayest foresee... the things which will be. For they will certainly be of like form, and it is not possible that they should deviate from the order of things now: accordingly to have contemplated human life for forty years is the same as to have contemplated it for ten thousand years.

Marcus Aurelius
Choose not to be harmed and you won't feel harmed. Don't feel harmed and you haven't been.

Marcus Aurelius
Be not as one that hath ten thousand years to live; death is nigh at hand: while thou livest, while thou hast time, be good.

Marcus Aurelius
Are you distracted by outward cares? Then allow yourself a space of quiet wherein you can add to your knowledge of the Good and learn to curb your restlessness. Nowhere can a man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul. Avail yourself often, then, of this retirement, and so continually renew yourself.

Marcus Aurelius