Meditations

By Marcus Aurelius

Status: Finished
Finished: 2025-10-25
Score: 3.6
Pages: 300
Language: English
File: meditations-marcus-aurelius.pdf

About The Book

Write about the book, the writer and the translator here, along with your thoughts.

Highlights

The First Book

In the first book, Marcus Aurelius talks about the people who helped his personal development, and what he had learned from them.

His Grandfather

Character and self-control.

His Biological Father

Integrity and manliness.

His Mother

Her reverence for the divine, her generosity, her inability not only to do wrong but even to conceive of doing it.
And the simple way she lived.

His Great Grandfather

To avoid the public schools, to hire good private teachers, and to accept the resulting costs as money well-spent.

His First Teacher

Not to support this side or that in chariot-racing, this fighter or that in the games.
To put up with discomfort and not make demands.
To do my own work, mind my own business, and have no time for slanderers.

Diognetus

Not to waste time on nonsense.
Not to be taken in by conjurors and hoodoo artists with their talk about incantations and exorcism and all the rest of it.
Not to be obsessed with quail-fighting or other crazes like that.
To hear unwelcome truths.
To practice philosophy, and to study.
To write dialogues as a student.
To choose the Greek lifestyle, the camp-bed and the cloak.

Rusticus

The recognition that I needed to train and discipline my character.
Not to dress up just to stroll around the house,
To write straightforward letters,
To behave in a conciliatory way when people who have angered or annoyed us want to make up.
To read attentively, not to be satisfied with “just getting the gist of it.”
And not to fall for every smooth talker.

Apollonius

Independence and unvarying reliability,
To pay attention to nothing, no matter how fleetingly, except the logos.
To be the same in all circumstances, intense pain, the loss of a child, chronic illness.
To see clearly, from his example, that a man can show both strength and flexibility.
His patience in teaching. And to have seen someone who clearly viewed his expertise and ability as a teacher as the humblest of virtues.
And to have learned how to accept favors from friends without losing your self-respect or appearing ungrateful.

Sextus

Kindness.
An example of fatherly authority in the home. What it means to live as nature requires.
To show intuitive sympathy for friends, tolerance to amateurs and sloppy thinkers. His ability to get along with everyone.
To investigate and analyze, with understanding and logic.
Not to display anger or other emotions. To be free of passion and yet full of love.
To praise without bombast; to display expertise without pretension.

Alexander (The Literary Critic)

Not to be constantly correcting people, and in particular not to jump on them whenever they make an error of usage or a grammatical mistake or mispronounce something, but just answer their question or add another example, or debate the issue itself (not their phrasing), or make some other contribution to the discussion, and insert the right expression, unobtrusively.

Fronto

To recognize the malice, cunning, and hypocrisy that power produces, and the peculiar ruthlessness often shown by people from “good families.”

Alexander (The Platonist)

Not to be constantly telling people (or writing them) that I’m too busy, unless I really am. Similarly, not to be always ducking my responsibilities to the people around me because of “pressing business.”

Catulus

Not to shrug off a friend’s resentment, even unjustified resentment, but try to put things right.
To show your teachers ungrudging respect and your children unfeigned love.

His Brother (Severus)

To love my family, truth and justice.
It was through him that I conceived of a society of equal laws, governed by equality of status and of speech, and of rulers who respect the liberty of their subjects above all else.
And from him as well, to be steady and consistent in valuing philosophy.
And to help others and be eager to share, not to be a pessimist, and never to doubt your friends’ affection for you.
And that when people incurred his disapproval, they always knew it. And that his friends never had to speculate about his attitude to anything: it was always clear.

Maximus

Self-control and resistance to distractions.
Optimism in adversity—especially illness.
A personality in balance: dignity and grace together.
Doing your job without whining.
Other people’s certainty that what he said was what he thought, and what he did was done without malice.
Never taken aback or apprehensive. Neither rash nor hesitant, but not aggressive or paranoid either.
Generosity, charity, honesty.
The sense he gave of staying on the path rather than being kept on it.
That no one could ever have felt patronized by him, or in a position to patronize him.
A sense of humor.

His Adopted Father

Compassion. Unwavering adherence to decisions, once he’d reached them. Indifference to superficial honors. Hard work. Persistence.
Listening to anyone who could contribute to the public good.
His dogged determination to treat people as they deserved.
A sense of when to push and when to back off.
Putting a stop to the pursuit of boys.
His altruism. Not expecting his friends to keep him entertained at dinner or to travel with him.
His searching questions at meetings. A kind of single-mindedness, almost, never content with first impressions, or breaking off the discussion prematurely.
His constancy to friends—never getting fed up with them, or playing favorites.
Self-reliance, always. And cheerfulness.
And his advance planning (well in advance) and his discreet attention to even minor things.
His restrictions on acclamations, and all attempts to flatter him.
His attitude to the gods: no superstitiousness. And his attitude to men: no demagoguery, no currying favor, no pandering. Always sober, always steady, and never vulgar or a prey to fads.
The way he handled the material comforts that fortune had supplied him in such abundance—without arrogance and without apology. If they were there, he took advantage of them. If not, he didn’t miss them.
No one ever called him glib, or shameless, or pedantic. They saw him for what he was: a man tested by life, accomplished, unswayed by flattery, qualified to govern both himself and them.
His respect for people who practiced philosophy, or listening to them.
His ability to feel at ease with people, and put them at their ease, without being pushy.
His willingness to take adequate care of himself. Not a hypochondriac or obsessed with his appearance, but not ignoring things either. With the result that he hardly ever needed medical attention, or drugs or any sort of salve or ointment.
His willingness to yield the floor to experts, in oratory, law, psychology, whatever, and to support them energetically, so that each of them could fulfill his potential.
That he respected tradition.
Not prone to go off on tangents, or pulled in all directions, but sticking with the same old places and the same old things.
The way he could have one of his migraines and then go right back to what he was doing, fresh and at the top of his game.
That he had so few secrets, only state secrets, in fact, and not all that many of those.
The way he kept public actions within reasonable bounds, because he looked to what needed doing and not the credit to be gained from doing it.
No bathing at strange hours, no self-indulgent building projects, no concern for food, or the cut and color of his clothes, or having attractive slaves.
He never exhibited rudeness, lost control of himself, or turned violent. No one ever saw him sweat. Everything was to be approached logically and with due consideration, in a calm and orderly fashion but decisively, and with no loose ends.
You could have said of him (as they say of Socrates) that he knew how to enjoy and abstain from things that most people find it hard to abstain from and all too easy to enjoy. Strength, perseverance, self-control in both areas: the mark of a soul in readiness, indomitable.

The Gods

That I had good people around me, almost without exception. And that I never lost control of myself with any of them, although I had it in me to do that, and I might have, easily. But thanks to the gods, I was never put in that position, and so escaped the test.
That I wasn’t raised by my grandfather’s girlfriend for longer than I was.
- I wonder why was that.
That I didn’t lose my virginity too early, and didn’t enter adulthood until it was time, put it off, even.
That I had someone, as a ruler and as a father, who could keep me from being arrogant and make me realize that even at court you can live without a troop of bodyguards, and gorgeous clothes, lamps, sculpture, the whole charade. That you can behave almost like an ordinary person without seeming slovenly or careless as a ruler or when carrying out official obligations.
That I had the kind of brother I did. One whose character challenged me to improve my own. One whose love and affection enriched my life.
That my children weren’t born stupid or physically deformed.
That I wasn’t more talented in rhetoric or poetry, or other areas. If I’d felt that I was making better progress I might never have given them up.
That I knew Apollonius, and Rusticus, and Maximus.
That I was shown clearly and often what it would be like to live as nature requires. The gods did all they could to ensure that I could live as nature demands.
That my body has held out, especially considering the lif I’ve led.
That I never laid a finger on Benedicta or on Theodotus. And that even later, when I was overcome by passion, I recovered from it.
That even though I was often upset with Rusticus I never did anything I would have regretted later.
That even though she died young, at least my mother spent her last years with me.
That whenever I felt like helping someone who was short of money, or otherwise in need, I never had to be told that I had no resources to do it with. And that I was never put in that position myself.
That I have the wife I do: obedient, loving, humble.
That my children had competent teachers.
Remedies granted through dreams, when I was coughing blood, for instance, and having fits of dizziness. And the one at Caieta.
That when I became interested in philosophy I didn’t fall into the hands of charlatans, and didn’t get bogged down in writing treatises, or become absorbed by logic-chopping, or preoccupied with physics.

All things for which “we need the help of fortune and the gods.”

The Second Book

In the second book, Marcus talks about the source of bad actions (ignorance), distractions and focus, mortality, resisting to passions and accepting changes.

When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil.

Think of it this way: You are an old man. Stop allowing your mind to be a slave, to be jerked about by selfish impulses, to kick against fate and the present, and to mistrust the future.

What is divine is full of Providence. Even chance is not divorced from nature, from the inweaving and enfolding of things governed by Providence. Everything proceeds from it.

Remember how long you’ve been putting this off, how many extensions the gods gave you, and you didn’t use them. At some point you have to recognize what world it is that you belong to; what power rules it and from what source you spring; 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.

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. You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life? If you can manage this, that’s all even the gods can ask of you.

Yes, keep on degrading yourself, soul. But soon your chance at dignity will be gone. Everyone gets one life. Yours is almost used up, and instead of treating yourself with respect, you have entrusted your own happiness to the souls of others.

Do external things distract you? Then make time for yourself to learn something worthwhile; stop letting yourself be pulled in all directions. But make sure you guard against the other kind of confusion. People who labor all their lives but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse toward are wasting their time—even when hard at work.

Ignoring what goes on in other people’s souls—no one ever came to grief that way. But if you won’t keep track of what your own soul’s doing, how can you not be unhappy?

In comparing sins (the way people do) Theophrastus says that the ones committed out of desire are worse than the ones committed out of anger: which is good philosophy. The angry man seems to turn his back on reason out of a kind of pain and inner convulsion. But the man motivated by desire, who is mastered by pleasure, seems somehow more self-indulgent, less manly in his sins. Theophrastus is right, and philosophically sound, to say that the sin committed out of pleasure deserves a harsher rebuke than the one committed out of pain. The angry man is more like a victim of wrongdoing, provoked by pain to anger. The other man rushes into wrongdoing on his own, moved to action by desire.

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

But death and life, success and failure, pain and pleasure, wealth and poverty, all these happen to good and bad alike, and they are neither noble nor shameful—and hence neither good nor bad.

The speed with which all of them vanish,the objects in the world, and the memory of them in time. And the real nature of the things our senses experience, especially those that entice us with pleasure or frighten us with pain or are loudly trumpeted by pride. To understand those things, how stupid, contemptible, grimy, decaying, and dead they are, that’s what our intellectual powers are for.

And what dying is, and that if you look at it in the abstract and break down your imaginary ideas of it by logical analysis, you realize that it’s nothing but a process of nature, which only children can be afraid of.

What is divine deserves our respect because it is good; what is human deserves our affection because it is like us.

And our pity too, sometimes, for its inability to tell good from bad, as terrible a blindness as the kind that can’t tell white from black.

Even if you’re going to live three thousand more years, or ten times that, remember: you cannot lose another life than the one you’re living now, or live another one than the one you’re losing. The longest amounts to the same as the shortest. The present is the same for everyone; its loss is the same for everyone; and it should be clear that a brief instant is all that is lost. For you can’t lose either the past or the future; how could you lose what you don’t have?

Remember two things:

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;

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.

The human soul degrades itself:

Above all, when it does its best to become an abscess, a kind of detached growth on the world. To be disgruntled at anything that happens is a kind of secession from Nature, which comprises the nature of all things.

When it turns its back on another person or sets out to do it harm, as the souls of the angry do.

When it is overpowered by pleasure or pain.

When it puts on a mask and does or says something artificial or false.

When it allows its action and impulse to be without a purpose, to be random and disconnected.

Human life. Duration: momentary. Nature: changeable. Perception: dim. Condition of Body: decaying. Soul: spinning around. Fortune: unpredictable. Lasting Fame: uncertain. Sum Up: The body and its parts are a river, the soul a dream and mist, life is warfare and a journey far from home, lasting reputation is oblivion.

And above all, that it accepts death in a cheerful spirit, as nothing but the dissolution of the elements from which each living thing is composed. If it doesn’t hurt the individual elements to change continually into one another, why are people afraid of all of them changing and separating? It’s a natural thing. And nothing natural is evil.

The Third Book

Not just that every day more of our life is used up and less and less of it is left, but this too: if we live longer, can we be sure our mind will still be up to understanding the world—to the contemplation that aims at divine and human knowledge? If our mind starts to wander, we’ll still go on breathing, go on eating, imagining things, feeling urges and so on. But getting the most out of ourselves, calculating where our duty lies, analyzing what we hear and see, deciding whether it’s time to call it quits—all the things you need a healthy mind for . . . all those are gone.

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.

And olives on the point of falling: the shadow of decay gives them a peculiar beauty.

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 need to avoid certain things in your train of thought: everything random, everything irrelevant. And certainly everything self-important or malicious. You need to get used to winnowing your thoughts, so that if someone says, “What are you thinking about?” you can respond at once (and truthfully) that you are thinking this or thinking that.

How to act:

Never under compulsion, out of selfishness, without forethought, with misgivings.

Don’t gussy up your thoughts.

No surplus words or unnecessary actions.

Let the spirit in you represent a man, an adult, a citizen, a Roman, a ruler. Taking up his post like a soldier and patiently awaiting his recall from life. Needing no oath or witness.

Cheerfulness. Without requiring other people’s help. Or serenity supplied by others.

To stand up straight—not straightened.
If, at some point in your life, you should come across anything better than justice, honesty, self-control, courage— than a mind satisfied that it has succeeded in enabling you to act rationally, and satisfied to accept what’s beyond its control—if you find anything better than that, embrace it without reservations—it must be an extraordinary thing indeed—and enjoy it to the full.

Never regard something as doing you good if it makes you betray a trust, or lose your sense of shame, or makes you show hatred, suspicion, ill will, or hypocrisy, or a desire for things best done behind closed doors.

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. It’s what makes thoughtfulness possible, and affection for other people, and submission to the divine.

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.

Doctors keep their scalpels and other instruments handy, for emergencies. Keep your philosophy ready too—ready to understand heaven and earth. In everything you do, even the smallest thing, remember the chain that links them. Nothing earthly succeeds by ignoring heaven, nothing heavenly by ignoring the earth.

To experience sensations: even grazing beasts do that. To
let your desires control you: even wild animals do that—and rutting humans, and tyrants. To make your mind your guide to what seems best: even people who deny the gods do that. Even people who betray their country. Even people who do <. . .> behind closed doors.

If all the rest is common coin, then what is unique to the good man? To welcome with affection what is sent by fate. Not to stain or disturb the spirit within him with a mess of false beliefs. Instead, to preserve it faithfully, by calmly obeying God—saying nothing untrue, doing nothing unjust. And if the others don’t acknowledge it—this life lived with simplicity, humility, cheerfulness—he doesn’t resent them for it, and isn’t deterred from following the road where it leads: to the end of life. An end to be approached in purity, in serenity, in acceptance, in peaceful unity with what must be.

The Fourth Book

What’s there to complain about? People’s misbehavior? But take into consideration:

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.

and keep your mouth shut.

Or is it your reputation that’s bothering you? But look at how soon we’re all forgotten. The abyss of endless time that swallows it all. The emptiness of all those applauding hands. The people who praise us—how capricious they are, how arbitrary. And the tiny region in which it all takes place. 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.

So keep this refuge in mind: the back roads of your self. Above all, no strain and no stress. Be straightforward. Look at things like a man, like a human being, like a citizen, like a mortal. And among the things you turn to, these two:

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

That everything you see will soon alter and cease to exist. Think of how many changes you’ve already seen. “The world is nothing but change. Our life is only perception.”

Death: something like birth, a natural mystery, elements that split and recombine. Not an embarrassing thing. Not an offense to reason, or our nature.

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 harm you—inside or out.

to reconsider your position, when someone can set you straight or convert you to his. But your conversion should always rest on a conviction that it’s right, or benefits others—nothing else. Not because it’s more appealing or more popular.

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

People who are excited by posthumous fame forget that the people who remember them will soon die too. And those after them in turn. Until their memory, passed from one to another like a candle flame, gutters and goes out.

But suppose that those who remembered you were immortal and your memory undying. What good would it do you? And I don’t just mean when you’re dead, but in your own lifetime. What use is praise, except to make your lifestyle a little more comfortable?

Beautiful things of any kind are beautiful in themselves and sufficient to themselves. Praise is extraneous. The object of praise remains what it was—no better and no worse.

They are beautiful as long as we consider them beautiful. However, by themselves, they are just a bunch of atoms glued together. Nothing more.

Does anything genuinely beautiful need supplementing? No more than justice does—or truth, or kindness, or humility. Are any of those improved by being praised? Or damaged by contempt? Is an emerald suddenly flawed if no one admires it? Or gold, or ivory, or purple? Lyres? Knives? Flowers? Bushes?

How does the earth find room for all the bodies buried in it since the beginning of time? They linger for whatever length of time, and then, through change and decomposition, make room for others. So too with the souls that inhabit the air. They linger a little, and then are changed—diffused and kindled into fire, absorbed into the logos from which all things spring, and so make room for new arrivals.

Not to be driven this way and that, but always to behave with justice and see things as they are.

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.

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?” But we need to eliminate unnecessary assumptions as well. To eliminate the unnecessary actions that follow.

Life is short. That’s all there is to say. Get what you can from the present—thoughtfully, justly.

Alien: (n.) one who doesn’t know what the world contains. Or how it operates.

Fugitive: (n.) one who evades his obligations to others.

Blind: (adj.) one who keeps the eyes of his mind shut tight.

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

Rebel: (n.) one who is rebellious, one who withdraws from the logos of Nature because he resents its workings. (It produced you; now it produces this.)

Schismatic: (n.) one who separates his own soul from others with the logos. They should be one.

Love the discipline you know, and let it support you. Entrust everything willingly to the gods, and then make your way through life—no one’s master and no one’s slave.

A key point to bear in mind: The value of attentiveness varies in proportion to its object. You’re better off not giving the small things more time than they deserve.

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. A resolve to accept whatever happens as necessary and familiar, flowing like water from that same source and spring.

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 stinking with pus, or consumed by cancer. 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 naturally or not—is neither natural nor unnatural.

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 tomorrow is just as small.

Don’t let yourself forget how many doctors have died, after furrowing their brows over how many deathbeds. How many astrologers, after pompous forecasts about others’ ends. How many philosophers, after endless disquisitions on death and immortality. How many warriors, after inflicting thousands of casualties themselves. How many tyrants, after abusing the power of life and death atrociously, as if they were themselves immortal.

In short, know this: Human lives are brief and trivial. Yesterday a blob of semen; tomorrow embalming fluid, ash. To pass through this brief life as nature demands. To give it up without complaint. Like an olive that ripens and falls. Praising its mother, thanking the tree it grew on.

"It’s unfortunate that this has happened." 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. It could have happened to anyone. But not everyone could have remained unharmed by it. Why treat the one as a misfortune rather than the other as fortunate? Can you really call something a misfortune that doesn’t violate human nature? Or do you think something that’s not against nature’s will can violate it? But you know what its will is. Does what’s happened keep you from acting with justice, generosity, self-control, sanity, prudence, honesty, humility, straightforwardness, and all the other qualities that allow a person’s nature to fulfill itself?

I am going to quote it if I fart in public.

A trite but effective tactic against the fear of death: think of the list of people who had to be pried away from life. What did they gain by dying old? In the end, they all sleep six feet under—Caedicianus, Fabius, Julian, Lepidus, and all the rest. They buried their contemporaries, and were buried in turn.

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?

Take the shortest route, the one that nature planned—to speak and act in the healthiest way. Do that, and be free of pain and stress, free of all calculation and pretension.

The Fifth Book

At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work, as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born, for the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?

"But it’s nicer here..." 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? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?

"But we have to sleep sometime..." Agreed. But nature set a limit on that—as it did on eating and drinking. And you’re over the limit. You’ve had more than enough of that. But not of working. There you’re still below your quota.

People who love what they do wear themselves down doing it, they even forget to wash or eat. Do you have less respect for your own nature than the engraver does for engraving, the dancer for the dance, the miser for money or the social climber for status? When they’re really possessed by what they do, they’d rather stop eating and sleeping than give up practicing their arts. Is helping others less valuable to you? Not worth your effort?

The others obey their own lead, follow their own impulses. Don’t be distracted. Keep walking. Follow your own nature, and follow Nature—along the road they share.

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.

Not to feel exasperated, or defeated, or despondent because your days aren’t packed with wise and moral actions. 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.

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.

Consider all that you’ve gone through, all that you’ve survived. And that the story of your life is done, your assignment complete. How many good things have you seen? How much pain and pleasure have you resisted? How many honors have you declined? How many unkind people have you been kind to?

Why are you still here? Sensory objects are shifting and unstable; our senses dim and easily deceived; the soul itself a decoction of the blood; fame in a world like this is worthless.

—And so? Wait for it patiently—annihilation or metamorphosis.

—And until that time comes—what?
Honor and revere the gods, treat human beings as they deserve, be tolerant with others and strict with yourself. Remember, nothing belongs to you but your flesh and blood, and nothing else is under your control.

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.

The Sixth Book

Because dying, too, is one of our assignments in life. There as well: “to do what needs doing.”

That’s what we need to do all the time—all through our lives when things lay claim to our trust—to lay them bare and see how pointless they are, to strip away the legend that encrusts them.

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 is it in ourselves that we should prize?

Not just transpiration (even plants do that).

Or respiration (even beasts and wild animals breathe).

Or being struck by passing thoughts.

Or jerked like a puppet by your own impulses.

Or moving in herds.

Or eating, and relieving yourself afterwards.

Then what is to be prized? An audience clapping? No. No more than the clacking of their tongues. Which is all that public praise amounts to—a clacking of tongues. So we throw out other people’s recognition. What’s left for us to prize?

I think it’s this: to do (and not do) what we were designed for. That’s the goal of all trades, all arts, and what each of them aims at: that the thing they create should do what it was designed to do. The nurseryman who cares for the vines, the horse trainer, the dog breeder—this is what they aim at. And teaching and education—what else are they trying to accomplish?

RN: How do you know what you were designed for? If we look at it at the evolutionary basis, it's just survival and reproduction. Thus, all the governance, philosophy and education would be pointless. I think you should do what you really enjoy with your "heart".

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.

If anyone can refute me—show me I’m making a mistake or looking at things from the wrong perspective—I’ll gladly change. It’s the truth I’m after, and the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance.

Remember—your responsibilities can be broken down into individual parts as well. Concentrate on those, and finish the job methodically—without getting stirred up or meeting anger with anger.

How cruel—to forbid people to want what they think is good for them. And yet that’s just what you won’t let them do when you get angry at their misbehavior. They’re drawn toward what they think is good for them.

"But it’s not good for them." Then show them that. Prove it to them. Instead of losing your temper.

Death. The end of sense-perception, of being controlled by our emotions, of mental activity, of enslavement to our bodies.

Disgraceful: for the soul to give up when the body is still going strong.

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?

RN: Because you do not like it. "Bad" has no real meaning other than "not being liked by you." It is relative and things that others find good can be bad for you.

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 and pull on each other, and breathe together, and are one.

The things ordained for you—teach yourself to be at one with those. And the people who share them with you—treat them with love. With real love.

RN: It looks like a bad reasoning to treat things with love just because they share the same source with you. Think about a virus for example.

If the gods have made decisions about me and the things that happen to me, then they were good decisions. (It’s hard to picture a god who makes bad ones.) And why would they expend their energies on causing me harm?

RN: I think that your understanding of good and bad is flawed.

Whatever happens to you is for the good of the world. That would be enough right there. But if you look closely you’ll generally notice something else as well: whatever happens to a single person is for the good of others. (Good in the ordinary sense—as the world defines it.)

RN: No, it's not.

The only thing that isn’t worthless: to live this life out truthfully and rightly. And be patient with those who don’t.

It doesn’t bother you that you weigh only x or y pounds and not three hundred. Why should it bother you that you have only x or y years to live and not more? You accept the limits placed on your body. Accept those placed on your time.

The Seventh Book

Is my intellect up to this? If so, then I’ll put it to work, like a tool provided by nature. And if it isn’t, then I’ll turn the job over to someone who can do better—unless I have no choice.

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? What’s closer to nature’s heart? Can you take a hot bath and leave the firewood as it was? Eat food without transforming it? Can any vital process take place without something being changed?

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. And, above all, that they haven’t really hurt you. They haven’t diminished your ability to choose.

When people injure you, ask yourself what good or harm they thought would come of it. If you understand that, you’ll feel sympathy rather than outrage or anger. Your sense of good and evil may be the same as theirs, or near it, in which case you have to excuse them. Or your sense of good and evil may differ from theirs. In which case they’re misguided and deserve your compassion. Is that so hard?

Treat what you don’t have as nonexistent. Look at what you have, the things you value most, and think of how much you’d crave them if you didn’t have them. But be careful. Don’t feel such satisfaction that you start to overvalue them, that it would upset you to lose them.

Wash yourself clean. With simplicity, with humility, with indifference to everything but right and wrong.

Everything has to do what it was made for. And other things were made for those with logos. In this respect as in others: lower things exist for the sake of higher ones, and higher things for one another.

RN: How do you decide who is higher and who is lower?

Now, the main thing we were made for is to work with
others.

Secondly, to resist our body’s urges. Thought seeks to be their master, not their subject. And so it should: they were created for its use.

And the third thing is to avoid rashness and credulity.

And in most cases what Epicurus said should help: that pain is neither unbearable nor unending, as long as you keep in mind its limits and don’t magnify them in your imagination.

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.

The Eight Book

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.

"Then where is it to be found?" In doing what human nature requires.

"How?" Through first principles. Which should govern your intentions and your actions.

"What principles?" 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.

The first step: Don’t be anxious. Nature controls it all. And before long you’ll be no one, nowhere—like Hadrian, like Augustus.

The second step: Concentrate on what you have to do. Fix your eyes on it. Remind yourself that your task is to be a good human being; remind yourself what nature demands of people. Then do it, without hesitation, and speak the truth as you see it. But with kindness. With humility. Without hypocrisy.

Don’t be overheard complaining about life at court. Not even to yourself.

Where have they gone, the brilliant, the insightful ones, the proud? Brilliant as Charax and Demetrius the Platonist and Eudaemon and the rest of them. Short-lived creatures, long dead. Some of them not remembered at all, some become legends, some lost even to legend.

That line they write on tombs—“last surviving descendant.” Consider their ancestors’ anxiety—that there be a successor. But someone has to be the last. There, too, the death of a whole house.

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.

"But there are external obstacles..." Not to behaving with justice, self-control, and good sense.

"Well, but perhaps to some more concrete action." But if you accept the obstacle and work with what you’re given, an alternative will present itself—another piece of what you’re trying to assemble. Action by action.

Don’t let your imagination be crushed by life as a whole. Don’t try to picture everything bad that could possibly happen. Stick with the situation at hand, and ask, “Why is this so unbearable? Why can’t I endure it?” You’ll be embarrassed to answer.

Then remind yourself that past and future have no power over you. Only the present—and even that can be minimized. Just mark off its limits. And if your mind tries to claim that it can’t hold out against that... Well, then, heap shame upon it.

No one can obstruct the operations of the mind. Nothing can get at them—not fire or steel, not tyrants, not abuse—nothing. As long as it’s “a sphere... In perfect stillness.”

RN: A bullet in the head can.

People find pleasure in different ways. I find it in keeping my mind clear. In not turning away from people or the things that happen to them. In accepting and welcoming everything I see. In treating each thing as it deserves.

People out for posthumous fame forget that the Generations To Come will be the same annoying people they know now. And just as mortal. What does it matter to you if they say x about you, or think y?

If the problem is something in your own character, who’s stopping you from setting your mind straight?

And if it’s that you’re not doing something you think you
should be, why not just do it?

"But there are insuperable obstacles." Then it’s not a problem. The cause of your inaction lies outside you.

"But how can I go on living with that undone?" Then depart, with a good conscience, as if you’d done it, embracing the obstacles too.

Nothing but what you get from first impressions. That someone has insulted you, for instance. That—but not that it’s done you any harm. The fact that my son is sick—that I can see. But “that he might die of it,” no. Stick with first impressions. Don’t extrapolate. And nothing can happen to you.

Nature has no door to sweep things out of. But the wonderful thing about its workmanship is how, faced with that limitation, it takes everything within it that seems broken, old and useless, transforms it into itself, and makes new things from it. So that it doesn’t need material from any outside source, or anywhere to dispose of what’s left over. It relies on itself for all it needs: space, material, and labor.

The existence of evil does not harm the world. And an individual act of evil does not harm the victim.

RN: Look inside: It harms the victim.

The Ninth Book

And if we want to follow nature, to be of one mind with it, we need to share its indifference. To privilege pleasure over pain—life over death, fame over anonymity—is clearly blasphemous. Nature certainly doesn’t.

RN: Nope.

Don’t look down on death, but welcome it. It too is one of the things required by nature. Like youth and old age. Like growth and maturity. Like a new set of teeth, a beard, the first gray hair. Like sex and pregnancy and childbirth. Like all the other physical changes at each stage of life, our dissolution is no different.

To do harm is to do yourself harm. To do an injustice is to do yourself an injustice, it degrades you.

And you can also commit injustice by doing nothing.

Objective judgment, now, at this very moment. Unselfish action, now, at this very moment. Willing acceptance—now, at this very moment—of all external events. That’s all you need.

The design of the world is like a flood, sweeping all before it. The foolishness of them—little men busy with affairs of state, with philosophy—or what they think of as philosophy. Nothing but phlegm and mucus.

Start praying like this and you’ll see.

Not “some way to sleep with her”—but a way to stop wanting to.

Not “some way to get rid of him”—but a way to stop trying.

Not “some way to save my child”—but a way to lose your fear.

Redirect your prayers like that, and watch what happens.

Epicurus: “During my illness, my conversations were not about my physical state; I did not waste my visitors’ time with things of that sort, but went on discussing philosophy, and concentrated on one point in particular: how the mind can participate in the sensations of the body and yet maintain its serenity, and focus on its own well-being. Nor did I let my doctors strut about like grandees. I went on living my life the way it should be lived.”

The Tenth Book

Focus on what nature demands, as if you were governed by that alone. Then do that, and accept it, unless your nature as a living being would be degraded by it.

RN: He means: let the rational, purpose-driven part of human nature (our capacity for reason and social virtue) guide action. He does not mean "do whatever your present impulses feel like," even though impulses are also "natural."

Just remember: you can endure anything your mind can make endurable, by treating it as in your interest to do so.

Nature gives and nature takes away. Anyone with sense and humility will tell her, “Give and take as you please,” not out of defiance, but out of obedience and goodwill.

Stop whatever you’re doing for a moment and ask yourself: Am I afraid of death because I won’t be able to do this anymore?

When you look at Satyron, see Socraticus, or Eutyches,
or Hymen... When you look at yourself, see any of the emperors. And the same with everyone else. Then let it hit you: Where are they now? Nowhere... Or wherever.

That way you’ll see human life for what it is. Smoke. Nothing. Especially when you recall that once things alter they cease to exist through all the endless years to come.

Then why such turmoil? To live your brief life rightly, isn’t that enough?

None of us have much time. And yet you act as if things were eternal—the way you fear and long for them....

The Eleventh Book

Characteristics of the rational soul:

Self-perception, self-examination, and the power to make of itself whatever it wants.

It reaps its own harvest, unlike plants (and, in a different way, animals), whose yield is gathered in by others.

It reaches its intended goal, no matter where the limit of its life is set. So that it can say, “I have what I came for.”

It surveys the world and the empty space around it, and the way it’s put together. It delves into the endlessness of time to extend its grasp and comprehension of the periodic births and rebirths that the world goes through.

Affection for its neighbors. Truthfulness. Humility. Not to place anything above itself—which is characteristic of law as well.

As you move forward in the logos, people will stand in your way. They can’t keep you from doing what’s healthy; don’t let them stop you from putting up with them either. Take care on both counts. Not just sound judgments, solid actions, tolerance as well, for those who try to obstruct us or give us trouble in other ways.

Because anger, too, is weakness, as much as breaking down and giving up the struggle. Both are deserters: the man who breaks and runs, and the one who lets himself be alienated from his fellow humans.

Someone hates me. Their problem. Mine: to be patient and cheerful with everyone, including them. Ready to show them their mistake. Not spitefully, or to show off my own self-control, but in an honest, upright way. That’s what we should be like inside, and never let the gods catch us feeling anger or resentment.

A straightforward, honest person should be like someone who stinks: when you’re in the same room with him, you know it. But false straightforwardness is like a knife in the back.

RN: Haha.

False friendship is the worst. Avoid it at all costs. If you’re honest and straightforward and mean well, it should show in your eyes. It should be unmistakable.

And why is it so hard when things go against you? If it’s imposed by nature, accept it gladly and stop fighting it. And if not, work out what your own nature requires, and aim at that, even if it brings you no glory.

That if they’re right to do this, then you have no right to complain. And if they aren’t, then they do it involuntarily, out of ignorance. Because all souls are prevented from treating others as they deserve, just as they are kept from truth: unwillingly.

RN: Some people just love hurting others.

How much more damage anger and grief do than the things that cause them.

That kindness is invincible, provided it’s sincere, not ironic or an act. What can even the most vicious person do if you keep treating him with kindness and gently set him straight, if you get the chance, correcting him cheerfully at the exact moment that he’s trying to do you harm.

And along with not getting angry at others, try not to pander either. Both are forms of selfishness; both of them will do you harm.

When you start to lose your temper, remember: There’s nothing manly about rage. It’s courtesy and kindness that define a human being— and a man. That’s who possesses strength and nerves and guts, not the angry whiners. To react like that brings you closer to impassivity—and so to strength. Pain is the opposite of strength, and so is anger. Both are things we suffer from, and yield to.

... and one more thought, from Apollo: That to expect bad people not to injure others is crazy. It’s to ask the impossible. And to let them behave like that to other people but expect them to exempt you is arrogant—the act of a tyrant.

Four habits of thought to watch for, and erase from your mind when you catch them. Tell yourself:

This thought is unnecessary.

This one is destructive to the people around you.

This wouldn’t be what you really think (to say what you don’t think—the definition of absurdity)

“If you don’t have a consistent goal in life, you can’t live it in a consistent way.”

There is no common benchmark for all the things that people think are good—except for a few, the ones that affect us all. So the goal should be a common one—a civic one. If you direct all your energies toward that, your actions will be consistent. And so will you.

The Twelfth Book

If you can cut yourself—your mind—free of what other people do and say, of what you’ve said or done, of the things that you’re afraid will happen, the impositions of the body that contains you and the breath within, and what the whirling chaos sweeps in from outside, so that the mind is freed from fate, brought to clarity, and lives life on its own recognizance —doing what’s right, accepting what happens, and speaking the truth—

It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own. If a god appeared to us—or a wise human being, even —and prohibited us from concealing our thoughts or imagining anything without immediately shouting it out, we wouldn’t make it through a single day. That’s how much we value other people’s opinions—instead of our own.

Be grateful that on this raging sea you have a mind to guide you.

If it’s not right, don’t do it. If it’s not true, don’t say it.

That before long you’ll be no one, and nowhere. Like all the things you see now. All the people now living. Everything’s destiny is to change, to be transformed, to perish. So that new things can be born.

To be angry at something means you’ve forgotten: That everything that happens is natural. That the responsibility is theirs, not yours.

RN: Sometimes you need to be angry and act against it. Especially if you are living in a world filled with oppression and injustice.

People ask, “Have you ever seen the gods you worship?
How can you be sure they exist?” Answers:

Just look around you.

I’ve never seen my soul either. And yet I revere it.

RN: Well, they are pretty bad arguments.

Like the impresario ringing down the curtain on an actor: “But I’ve only gotten through three acts... !”

Yes. This will be a drama in three acts, the length fixed by the power that directed your creation, and now directs your dissolution. Neither was yours to determine. So make your exit with grace—the same grace shown to you.