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Marcus Aurelius -
Meditations (180 AD)
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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
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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.
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If it is not right, do not do it, if it is not true, do not say it. For let thy efforts be —
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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
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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.
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In the morning, when thou art sluggish at rousing thee, let this thought be present; I am rising to a man's work.
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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
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Choose not to be harmed and you won't feel harmed. Don't feel harmed and you haven't been.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Your mind will be like its habitual thoughts; for the soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts. Soak it then in such trains of thoughts as, for example: Where life is possible at all, a right life is possible.
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Socrates used to call the opinions of the many by the name of Lamiae, bugbears to frighten children.
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Think on this doctrine,—that reasoning beings were created for one another's sake; that to be patient is a branch of justice, and that men sin without intending it.
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To live each day as though one's last, never flustered, never apathetic, never attitudinizing – here is perfection of character.
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In the case of all things which have a certain constitution, whatever harm may happen to any of them, that which is affected becomes consequently worse; but in like case, a man becomes both better... and more worthy of praise, by making the right use of these accidents.
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A little time, and thou shalt close thy eyes; and him who has attended thee to thy grave, another soon will lament.
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Observe always that everything is the result of a change, and get used to thinking that there is nothing Nature loves so well as to change existing forms and to make new ones like them.
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The passing minute is every man's equal possession but what has once gone by is not ours.
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All men are made one for another: either then teach them better or bear with them.
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Look within. Within is the fountain of the good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.
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As the nature of the universal has given to every rational being all the powers that it has, so we have received from it this power also. For as the universal nature converts and fixes in its predestined place everything which stands in the way and opposes it, and makes such things a part of itself, so also the rational animal is able to make every hindrance its own material, and to use it for such purpose as it may have designed.
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Know the joy of life by piling good deed on good deed until no rift or cranny appears between them.
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The universal intelligence puts itself in motion for every separate effect... or it puts itself in motion once, and everything else comes by way of a sequence in a manner; or individual elements are the origin of all things. In a word, if there is a god, all is well; and if chance rules, do not thou be governed by it.
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How many, once lauded in song, are given over to the forgotten; and how many who sung their praises are clean gone long ago!
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Quote of the day
Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Marcus Aurelius
Creative Commons
Born:
April 26, 121
Died:
March 17, 180
(aged 58)
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