Marcus Aurelius

For outward show is a wonderful perverter of the reason, and when thou art most sure that thou art employed about things worth thy pains, it is then that it cheats thee most.

Just in the same way ought we to act all through life, and where there are things which appear most worthy of our approbation, we ought to lay them bare and look at their worthlessness and strip them of all the words by which they are…

Let the court and philosophy now be to thee step-mother and mother: return to philosophy frequently and repose in her, through whom what thou meetest with in the court appears to thee tolerable, and thou appearest tolerable in the court.

When thou hast been compelled by circumstances to be disturbed in a manner, quickly return to thyself, and do not continue out of tune longer than the compulsion lasts; for thou wilt have more mastery over the harmony by continually…

The universe is either a confusion, and a mutual involution of things, and a dispersion, or it is unity and order and providence.

The ruling principle is that which rouses and turns itself, and while it makes itself such as it is and such as it wills to be, it also makes everything which happens appear to itself to be such as it wills.

Take pleasure in one thing and rest in it, in passing from one social act to another social act, thinking of God.

The reason which governs knows what its own disposition is, and what it does, and on what material it works.

All existing things soon change, and they will either be reduced to vapor, if indeed all substance is one, or they will be dispersed.

Let neither the peculiar quality of anything nor its value escape thee.

For it is one of the acts of life, this act by which we die; it is sufficient then in this act also to do well what we have in hand (vi. 22, 28).

Let it make no difference to thee whether thou art cold or warm, if thou art doing thy duty; and whether thou art drowsy or satisfied with sleep; and whether ill-spoken of or praised; and whether dying or doing something else.

But all things are made and perfected according to this reason.

The substance of the universe is obedient and compliant; and the reason which governs it has in itself no cause for doing evil, for it has no malice, nor does it do evil to anything, nor is anything harmed by it.

If this is neither my own badness, nor an effect of my own badness, and the common weal is not injured, why am I troubled about it, and what is the harm to the common weal?

These two things are common both to the soul of God and to the soul of man, and to the soul of every rational being: not to be hindered by another; and to hold good to consist in the disposition to justice and the practice of it, and in…

Thou canst pass thy life in an equable flow of happiness, if thou canst go by the right way, and think and act in the right way.

Why then dost thou not wait in tranquillity for thy end, whether it is extinction or removal to another state?

But to have good repute amid such a world as this is an empty thing.

Soon, very soon, thou wilt be ashes, or a skeleton, and either a name or not even a name; but name is sound and echo.

Why do unskilled and ignorant souls disturb him who has skill and knowledge?

Thou seest how it has subordinated, co-ordinated, and assigned to everything its proper portion, and has brought together into concord with one another the things which are the best.

Accordingly it has made the inferior things for the sake of the superior, and it has fitted the superior to one another.

But so long as nothing of the kind drives me out, I remain, am free, and no man shall hinder me from doing what I choose; and I choose to do what is according to the nature of the rational and social animal.

But if men do not permit thee, then get away out of life, yet so as if thou wert suffering no harm.