Marcus Aurelius

Short lived are both the praiser and the praised, and the rememberer and the remembered: and all this in a nook of this part of the world; and not even here do all agree, no, not any one with himself: and the whole earth too is a point.

Attend to the matter which is before thee, whether it is an opinion or an act or a word.

Thou sufferest this justly: for thou choosest rather to become good to-morrow than to be good to-day.

I do it with reference to the good of mankind.

I receive it and refer it to the gods, and the source of all things, from which all that happens is derived.

Such as bathing appears to thee,--oil, sweat, dirt, filthy water, all things disgusting,--so is every part of life and everything.

Some indeed have not been remembered even for a short time, and others have become the heroes of fables, and again others have disappeared even from fables.

Remember this then, that this little compound, thyself, must either be dissolved, or thy poor breath must be extinguished, or be removed and placed elsewhere.

It is satisfaction to a man to do the proper works of a man.

Pain is either an evil to the body--then let the body say what it thinks of it--or to the soul; but it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquillity, and not to think that pain is an evil.

Think not so much of what thou hast not as of what thou hast: but of the things which thou hast select the best, and then reflect how eagerly they would have been sought, if thou hadst them not.

The rational principle which rules has this nature, that it is content with itself when it does what is just, and so secures tranquillity.

Let the wrong which is done by a man stay there where the wrong was done (viii. 29).

Let thy understanding enter into the things that are doing and the things which do them (vii. 4).

Adorn thyself with simplicity and modesty, and with indifference towards the things which lie between virtue and vice.

About death: whether it is a dispersion, or a resolution into atoms, or annihilation, it is either extinction or change.

About pain: the pain which is intolerable carries us off; but that which lasts a long time is tolerable; and the mind maintains its own tranquillity by retiring into itself, and the ruling faculty is not made worse.

And consider that as the heaps of sand piled on one another hide the former sands; so in life the events which go before are soon covered by those which come after.

It is a base thing for the countenance to be obedient and to regulate and compose itself as the mind commands, and for the mind not to be regulated and composed by itself.

No joining others in their wailing, no violent emotion.

Look round at the courses of the stars, as if thou wert going along with them; and constantly consider the changes of the elements into one another, for such thoughts purge away the filth of the terrene life.

Consider the past,--such great changes of political supremacies; thou mayest foresee also 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 the things which take place now; accordingly to have contemplated human life for forty years is the same as to have contemplated it…

Another may be more expert in casting his opponent; but he is not more social, nor more modest, nor better disciplined to meet all that happens, nor more considerate with respect to the faults of his neighbors.

Where any work can be done conformably to the reason which is common to gods and men, there we have nothing to fear; for where we are able to get profit by means of the activity which is successful and proceeds according to our…