Meditations

This is an AI translation of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations into contemporary English. The source text is George Long’s 1862 translation, available from Standard Ebooks.

Book I

From my grandfather Verus, I learned good character and how to keep my temper in check.

From what people told me about my father, who died when I was young: modesty, and a quiet strength.

From my mother, reverence and generosity. Not just avoiding wrong actions, but wrong thoughts. And a simple way of living, nothing like the extravagance of the wealthy.

From my great-grandfather, the value of good private tutors over public schools, and understanding that this is something worth spending real money on.

From my tutor, not to get caught up in chariot-racing factions — green or blue — or pick sides among gladiator types. From him I also learned to endure hard work, to need little, to do things with my own hands, to mind my own business, and to ignore gossip.

From Diognetus, my painting teacher, not to waste time on trivial things. Not to believe miracle-workers and charlatans with their talk of spells, exorcisms, and other nonsense. Not to raise quails for fighting, or get obsessed with things like that. To tolerate blunt, honest speech. To fall in love with philosophy. To study first with Bacchius, then Tandasis and Marcianus. To write dialogues as a young man. To want a simple bed, an animal skin to sleep on, and all the other austerities of the Greek philosophical life.

From Rusticus, my Stoic teacher, I first understood that my character needed work and discipline. He taught me not to get drawn into showy intellectual competition, or waste time writing abstract treatises, or deliver little moralizing speeches, or parade around showing off how disciplined and charitable I was. To stay away from rhetoric, poetry, and fancy prose. Not to walk around the house in formal clothes, or put on airs. To write simple, straightforward letters — like the one Rusticus himself wrote to my mother from Sinuessa. When people have wronged me or said something offensive, to be quick to forgive the moment they show willingness to make things right. To read carefully and not settle for a surface understanding of a book. Not to rush into agreement with people who talk too much. And I owe it to him that I was introduced to the writings of Epictetus — he lent me his own personal copy.

From Apollonius, my philosophy teacher, I learned inner freedom and steady, unwavering resolve. To look to nothing but reason, not even for a moment. To stay the same person through sharp pain, through the loss of a child, through long illness. To see in a living example that someone can be both utterly determined and gentle at the same time, and not irritable while teaching. To watch a man who clearly regarded his philosophical expertise as the least of his qualities. And from him, how to accept favors from friends without being diminished by them or taking them for granted.

From Sextus, the philosopher, I learned a generous spirit, and what it looks like when a household is run with a father's warmth. I learned what it means to live in harmony with nature. Dignity without pretension. Looking out for friends. Patience with people who are ignorant or careless in their thinking. He had a gift for meeting anyone where they were, so that his company was more pleasant than any flattery — and yet people held him in the deepest respect. He had a knack for identifying and organizing the principles you actually need to live by, and he did it clearly and methodically. He never showed anger or any other strong emotion, but was completely free of inner turmoil — and at the same time deeply affectionate. He could show approval without making a fuss, and he knew a great deal without ever showing off.

From Alexander the grammarian, I learned not to nitpick. When someone used an awkward word or made a grammatical error or spoke clumsily, I learned not to correct them with a rebuke, but to smoothly use the right word myself — in my reply, or while discussing the subject, or through some other natural suggestion — so the correction landed without the sting.

From Fronto, my rhetoric teacher, I came to see what envy, manipulation, and hypocrisy look like in a tyrant. And that, as a general rule, people in our Roman aristocracy tend to lack genuine warmth toward their own children.

From Alexander the Platonist, not to constantly tell people — in person or in letters — that I'm "too busy." Not to keep using the excuse of pressing business to avoid the obligations I owe to the people I live with.

From Catulus, my Stoic teacher, not to brush it off when a friend criticizes me, even if the criticism isn't fair, but to try to restore things to normal between us. To speak well of my teachers with real enthusiasm — the way Domitius and Athenodotus are said to have spoken of theirs. And to love my children genuinely.

From my brother Severus, I learned to love family, truth, and justice. Through him I came to know Thrasea, Helvidius, Cato, Dion, and Brutus — great men who stood up for freedom and the rule of law. From him I formed the vision of a state where the law applies equally to everyone, governed with respect for equal rights and free speech. A government that honors, above all, the liberty of its people. He also taught me consistency and steadiness in my commitment to philosophy. A readiness to do good, to be generous, to stay hopeful, and to trust that my friends love me. He never hid what he thought of people he disapproved of, and his friends never had to guess at what he wanted. He was transparent.

From Maximus, my Stoic mentor, I learned self-control, and not to be pulled off course by anything. Cheerfulness in all circumstances — including illness. The right combination of warmth and seriousness in character. Getting things done without complaining. Everyone who knew him believed he meant what he said and had no bad intentions in anything he did. Nothing surprised or rattled him. He was never in a hurry, never procrastinated, never at a loss, never gloomy. He didn't laugh to cover up frustration, and he was never driven by anger or suspicion. He was generous, forgiving, and honest through and through. He gave the impression of a man who had always been on the right path, not someone who had been corrected onto it. No one could ever feel looked down on by Maximus, and no one would dare think themselves better than him. He was also genuinely funny.

In my adoptive father, the Emperor Antoninus Pius, I saw gentleness and an unshakable commitment to every carefully considered decision. No interest in the hollow prestige of titles and honors. A love of hard work and persistence. A willingness to hear out anyone with a proposal for the common good. An unyielding sense of giving each person what they deserve. A wisdom, born from experience, about when to push hard and when to ease off.

He had overcome every appetite of youth. He saw himself as a citizen like any other. He released his friends from any obligation to dine with him or travel in his retinue — and those who missed a gathering for good reasons always found him unchanged when they returned.

He inquired into every matter thoroughly, patiently, never settling for first impressions. He kept his friends and didn't tire of them easily — but he wasn't clingy, either. He was content in all situations, and cheerful. He saw trouble coming from far off and prepared for the smallest things without fanfare.

He put a stop to public flattery and applause the moment it started. He watched over every necessity of the empire. He managed expenses carefully and bore the inevitable criticism for it. He was not superstitious about the gods. He never courted popularity through gifts, pandering, or flattery of the crowd. He was moderate, steady, never cheap in thought or action, and never chasing novelty.

The comforts that life offers in abundance — he used them without arrogance and without apology. When they were there, he enjoyed them simply. When they weren't, he didn't miss them.

No one could call him a showoff, or a lightweight, or a pedant. He was recognized by all as mature, complete, beyond flattery, and fully capable of managing both his own affairs and those of the state.

He respected genuine philosophers and didn't mock the pretenders — but he wasn't taken in by them, either. He was easy to talk to and pleasant company, without any forced charm.

He took reasonable care of his body — not clinging to life, not vain about his appearance, but not neglectful either. Through his own attentiveness, he rarely needed a doctor, medicine, or external treatment.

He was especially willing to step aside, without jealousy, for those with particular talents — in eloquence, knowledge of law, ethics, or anything else — and he supported them so each could be known for what they did best. He always acted within tradition without making a show of it.

He was not restless or drawn to change. He loved staying in the same places and returning to the same work. After his terrible headaches, he came back immediately to his duties, fresh and alert.

His private matters were few and rare, and only about affairs of state. He was thoughtful and economical in public spectacles, building projects, and distributions to the people — because he cared about doing what was right, not about the reputation that comes from it.

He didn't bathe at odd hours. He had no passion for building grand houses. He didn't fuss over food, the texture or color of his clothes, or the appearance of his household staff. His clothing came from Lorium, his coastal estate, and mostly from Lanuvium. We know how he treated the toll-collector at Tusculum who asked his forgiveness — and that was how he treated everyone.

There was nothing harsh in him, nothing relentless, nothing violent. He never did anything in a rush, as if breaking a sweat over it. He examined everything point by point, as though he had all the time in the world — calmly, methodically, decisively, consistently. What they say about Socrates applied to him as well: he could both go without and enjoy things that most people are too weak to resist and too undisciplined to enjoy in moderation. To have the strength for both — restraint and appreciation — that is the mark of a person with a balanced and unbreakable spirit. And that's what he showed, even during the illness of Maximus.

To the gods, I owe the fact that I had good grandparents, good parents, a good sister, good teachers, good companions, good relatives and friends — nearly everything good. And that I was never pushed into doing anything I'd regret toward any of them, even though my temperament might have led me there if circumstances had conspired. By their grace, no such test ever came.

I'm grateful that I wasn't raised too long by my grandfather's mistress, and that I kept my innocence in youth — that I didn't rush to prove my manhood but actually waited beyond what was necessary.

That I was placed under a ruler and father — Antoninus — who stripped away every trace of vanity in me, and showed me that you can live in a palace without needing bodyguards, elaborate robes, chandeliers, statues, or any such display. That a man in his position can live almost like a private citizen, without becoming any smaller in thought or any less vigorous in carrying out his public duties.

I thank the gods for giving me a brother like Severus, whose moral character pushed me to look more closely at myself, and whose respect and affection brought me genuine joy. That my children have not been born slow-witted or physically deformed. That I didn't make too much progress in rhetoric, poetry, or other literary pursuits — if I had seen myself succeeding in them, I might never have left them behind. That I moved quickly to give the people who raised me the positions of honor they wanted, rather than putting them off with promises of "someday, when you're older." That I came to know Apollonius, Rusticus, and Maximus.

That I received clear and frequent visions of what it means to live in harmony with nature, and what that kind of life looks like. So that, as far as the gods are concerned — their gifts, their help, their guidance — nothing stood in my way. If I still fall short, that's my own fault, my own failure to heed what they've practically spelled out for me.

That my body has held up as long as it has through this kind of life. That I never touched Benedicta or Theodotus. That when I did fall into passionate desire, I recovered from it. That even though I was often frustrated with Rusticus, I never did anything I had to regret. That although my mother was fated to die young, she spent her final years with me.

That whenever I wanted to help someone in need, I was never told I lacked the resources to do it. And that the same need — to depend on someone else for such help — never fell on me.

That I have a wife who is obedient, affectionate, and unpretentious. That I had no shortage of good tutors for my children. That remedies were shown to me in dreams — for various ailments, including the coughing of blood and dizzy spells.

And that when I developed a passion for philosophy, I didn't fall into the hands of some sophist, or get lost in analyzing old texts, or working out logical puzzles, or staring at the sky trying to explain celestial phenomena. All of these things required the help of the gods and of fortune.

Written among the Quadi, at the Granua.

Book II

Begin each morning by telling yourself: today I will encounter people who are meddlesome, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, envious, and difficult. They are this way because they don't understand the difference between good and evil. But I have seen that the good is beautiful and the bad is ugly, and that the person who wrongs me is my kin — not just of the same blood, but sharing in the same intelligence and the same spark of the divine. So no one can truly harm me, because no one can force ugliness on me. And I can't be angry at family, or hate them. We were made to work together, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the upper and lower rows of teeth. To work against each other is unnatural. And being resentful or turning your back — that's working against each other.

Whatever I am, it comes down to this: a little flesh, a little breath, and my rational mind. Throw away the books. Stop letting yourself be distracted — you don't have time for that. Instead, as if you were dying right now, look at the flesh for what it is: blood and bones, a tangle of nerves, veins, and arteries. And the breath — what is it, really? Air. Not even the same air, but constantly being expelled and sucked back in. So the third thing is what matters: your rational mind. Think about it this way. You are an old man. Stop letting your mind be a slave. Stop getting jerked around like a puppet into selfish impulses. Stop complaining about your lot, and stop dreading the future.

Everything that comes from the gods is full of providence. What comes from fortune is not separate from nature, or unwoven from what providence has ordered. Everything flows from there. And there is also necessity, and there is what benefits the whole universe — of which you are a part. Whatever the nature of the whole brings, and whatever serves to sustain it, is good for every part. The universe is sustained by change — change in the elements, and change in the things composed of them. Let these principles be enough for you. Let them be your settled convictions. And let go of that thirst for books, so that when you die it won't be with bitterness on your lips, but with genuine cheerfulness, truly and from the heart grateful to the gods.

Remember how long you've been putting these things off, and how many chances the gods have given you that you haven't taken. You need to understand, right now, what universe you belong to, what power governs it, and that your time here has a limit. Use it to clear the fog from your mind — or it will pass, and you will pass, and the chance will never come again.

Every moment, focus with steady discipline — as a Roman and as a human being — on doing what's in front of you with complete seriousness, with natural warmth, with independence, and with justice. Clear everything else from your mind. And you will clear it, if you do every act as though it were your last, dropping all carelessness and all emotional resistance to what reason demands, and all pretense, all self-absorption, all resentment toward what you've been given. You see how few things a person needs to master in order to live a smooth, reverent life. Because the gods ask nothing more of someone who holds to these things.

You are doing yourself harm, my soul — doing yourself harm. And you won't have the chance to honor yourself forever. Everyone's life is short enough. Yours is nearly over, and still you don't treat yourself with respect, but stake your happiness on the opinions of other people.

Do external events keep pulling you off course? Make space to learn something worthwhile, and stop being spun around. But watch out for the other extreme, too — because those people are also wasting their lives: the ones who exhaust themselves with constant activity but have no real purpose, no goal to aim their efforts at. Not even a clear direction for their thoughts.

Not knowing what's going on in someone else's mind rarely makes a person miserable. But not paying attention to what's going on in your own — that's a guaranteed path to unhappiness.

Always keep in mind: what is the nature of the whole, and what is my nature? How does mine relate to it? What kind of part am I, within what kind of whole? And remember that nothing prevents you from always acting and speaking in harmony with the nature you belong to.

Theophrastus, when comparing different kinds of wrongdoing — a comparison anyone would make using ordinary moral intuition — says something genuinely philosophical: wrongs committed out of desire are worse than wrongs committed out of anger. A person acting from anger seems to lose their grip on reason involuntarily, with a kind of pain and inner contraction. But a person acting from desire, overpowered by pleasure, seems more self-indulgent, more undisciplined in their wrongdoing. He was right to say this, and it's worthy of a philosopher: a wrong committed with pleasure is worse than one committed with pain. In general, the angry person seems more like someone who was first wronged themselves and is reacting out of hurt. The other is driven to wrongdoing entirely by their own appetite, carried along by desire.

Since you could leave this life at any moment, let that shape how you act and think. As for death itself — leaving the company of other people — there's nothing to fear if the gods exist, because they wouldn't subject you to anything truly bad. And if they don't exist, or don't care about human affairs, then what's the point of living in a universe empty of gods or empty of providence? But they do exist, and they do care about human life, and they've given us everything we need to avoid falling into genuine harm. As for the rest of it — if anything else were truly bad, they would have made sure we could avoid that too. And how can something that doesn't make a person worse make a person's life worse? It's not possible that the nature of the universe overlooked this through ignorance, or saw the problem but lacked the power to prevent or fix it. It's not possible that nature made the kind of error — whether from weakness or incompetence — that would let good and bad things fall randomly on good and bad people alike. But death and life, honor and dishonor, pain and pleasure — these things happen equally to good people and bad people, and they are things that neither improve us nor diminish us. Therefore, they are neither good nor evil.

How quickly everything vanishes. In the physical world, the bodies themselves. In time, even the memory of them. Consider the nature of all the things that attract you through the lure of pleasure, or frighten you with pain, or get celebrated by popular opinion — how cheap they are, how contemptible, how squalid, how short-lived, how dead. This is the work of your rational mind: to observe these things. To observe, too, what kind of people they are whose opinions and voices create reputations. To observe what death actually is — and see that if you strip away the images that surround it and examine it on its own terms, it's nothing more than a process of nature. And if you're afraid of a natural process, you're being childish. Death isn't just a process of nature, though — it also serves nature's purposes. And to observe how a human being draws close to the divine, and through what part of themselves, and what state that part must be in.

Nothing is more pathetic than the person who runs around investigating everything, who — as the poet says — digs into the things beneath the earth, and tries to read the minds of the people around him, without ever realizing that all he needs is to attend to the god within him and serve it genuinely. And that service means keeping it free from unruly passions, from thoughtlessness, from resentment of what comes from gods or other people. What comes from the gods deserves reverence, because of its excellence. What comes from other people deserves kindness, because of our kinship — and sometimes even pity, because of their failure to tell good from bad. And that's no small blindness, not unlike being unable to tell white from black.

Even if you were going to live three thousand years, or thirty thousand, remember this: no one loses any life other than the one they're living right now, and no one lives any life other than the one they're losing. The longest life and the shortest come to the same thing. The present moment is equal for everyone, even though what each person has already lost is different. And so what we lose turns out to be just a single moment. No one can lose the past — it's already gone. No one can lose the future — they don't have it yet. How can anyone take from you what you don't possess? Keep two things in mind. First, everything from the beginning of time has taken the same forms, cycling around and around, and it makes no difference whether you observe these patterns for a hundred years or two hundred or an eternity. Second, the person who lives the longest and the person who dies the soonest both lose exactly the same thing. Because the present is the only thing anyone has to lose — since that's all they ever had.

Remember that everything is a matter of judgement. What the Cynic philosopher Monimus said is obvious enough — and so is its practical value, if you take from it what's actually true.

Your soul does violence to itself, first, when it becomes a kind of abscess — a tumor on the universe — by resisting what happens. Because being frustrated with any event is a separation from nature, which contains within itself the natures of everything else. Second, when it turns away from another person, or moves against someone with the intent to harm — as angry people do. Third, when it is defeated by pleasure or pain. Fourth, when it puts on an act, doing or saying anything insincere or false. Fifth, when it lets any action or impulse happen aimlessly, without thought or purpose. Even the smallest thing should be done with some end in view. And the end for rational beings is to follow reason and to live by the law of the oldest and most venerable community there is.

Human life: its duration is a point in time. Its substance is flowing away. Its perception is dim. The whole body is decaying. The soul is a whirlpool. Fortune is unpredictable. Reputation is meaningless. To sum it up: everything belonging to the body is a river, everything belonging to the soul is dream and smoke, life is warfare and a visit to a foreign land, and fame after death is oblivion. So what can guide us? One thing, and only one: philosophy. And philosophy means keeping the god within you undamaged and whole, stronger than pleasure and pain, never acting without purpose, never with dishonesty or pretense, never depending on what someone else does or doesn't do. Accepting everything that happens, everything that is given, as coming from the same source you yourself came from. And above all, waiting for death with a calm mind, seeing it as nothing more than the dissolving of the elements that make up every living thing. If the elements themselves aren't harmed by constantly changing into one another, why should you be anxious about the change and dissolution of all of them together? It's natural. And nothing natural is evil.

Written at Carnuntum.

Book III

We should consider not only that our life is draining away day by day, leaving less and less behind, but something else, too: even if you live longer, there's no guarantee your mind will still be sharp enough to understand the world around you, or to grasp the things that matter — the knowledge of what is divine and what is human. When senility sets in, you'll still breathe, still eat, still have urges and impressions and appetites. What fades first is something else: the ability to use yourself fully, to meet the demands of your duty, to see things clearly, to know whether it's time to leave this life — everything that depends on a well-trained mind. So we need to hurry. Not just because death gets closer every day, but because understanding itself — the capacity to think clearly — gives out first.

Notice, too, that even the by-products of nature have a kind of beauty and charm. When bread bakes, the crust cracks open in places the baker never intended — and yet those cracks are somehow appealing, and make you want to eat it. Figs split open when they're fully ripe. Olives on the verge of falling off the branch have a particular beauty precisely because of how close they are to rotting. Ears of corn bending under their own weight. The furrowed brow of a lion. Foam dripping from a wild boar's mouth. Taken on their own, these things are far from pretty. But because they follow naturally from the way things are formed, they complete the picture. They please the eye. If you develop a genuine feeling for the workings of the universe, there's almost nothing in nature that won't strike you as beautifully arranged, one way or another. You'll look at the gaping jaws of real predators with the same appreciation you'd bring to a painter's or sculptor's rendering of them. You'll see a kind of ripeness and dignity in an old man or an old woman. You'll be able to see the beauty in young people with clear, uncorrupted eyes. Many things like this will reveal themselves — not to everyone, but to anyone who has become truly intimate with nature and her works.

Hippocrates cured many diseases, then fell sick himself and died. The Chaldean astrologers predicted death after death — and then fate came for them, too. Alexander, Pompey, Caesar — after obliterating whole cities, after cutting down tens of thousands of cavalry and infantry in battle — they themselves eventually left this life. Heraclitus spent all that time theorizing about the cosmic fire, and in the end was bloated with water and died covered in mud. Lice killed Democritus. A different kind of lice killed Socrates. So what's the point? You boarded the ship. You made the voyage. You've reached the shore. Now get off. If it's to another life, the gods are there too — you won't lack for them. If it's to nothingness, then you'll simply stop being pushed around by pain and pleasure, stop being a servant to this body — a vessel so much lesser than the thing it carries. Because what it carries is mind and spirit. What it is, is dirt and decay.

Don't waste the rest of your life on thoughts about other people — unless you're thinking about something that serves the common good. You're losing time you could spend on something else when you're wondering: what is that person doing? Why? What are they saying? What are they thinking? What are they scheming? All of this pulls you away from paying attention to your own rational mind. Cut off anything in the chain of your thoughts that is aimless and purposeless — and above all, anything driven by nosiness or malice. Train yourself so that if someone asked you at any moment, "What are you thinking about right now?" you could answer honestly, without hesitation, "This" or "That." And from your answer it would be immediately clear that everything in you is straightforward and generous, fitting for a social creature, someone who has no time for fantasies about pleasure or indulgence, no space for rivalry, envy, suspicion, or anything else you'd be embarrassed to admit was in your head.

A person like that — someone who no longer puts off becoming one of the best — is like a priest and servant of the gods. They are using the god within them, the one that keeps them untouched by pleasure, unhurt by pain, beyond the reach of any insult, incapable of feeling wronged. A fighter in the noblest fight — the fight not to be overpowered by any passion. Dyed through and through with justice. Welcoming with their whole soul everything that happens, everything assigned to them as their share. And rarely — only when truly necessary and for the sake of others — wondering what someone else is saying, doing, or thinking.

What they work on is their own. What they constantly attend to is their own thread in the larger fabric. They make their own actions beautiful and are convinced that what has been given to them is good. Because the lot assigned to each person goes along with them, and they go along with it.

They also remember this: every rational being is their relative. Caring for all people is part of human nature. But you shouldn't care about everyone's opinion — only the opinions of those who genuinely live in harmony with nature. As for those who don't — keep in mind what kind of people they are, at home and in public, by night and by day, and the company they keep. Don't value praise that comes from people who can't even satisfy themselves.

Don't work grudgingly, or without concern for the common good, or carelessly, or as if you're being pulled in different directions. Don't dress up your thoughts in fancy language. Don't be a person of too many words, or too many projects. Let the god within you be the guardian of a living being who is mature, engaged in civic life, a Roman, and a ruler — someone who has taken his post like a soldier awaiting the signal to withdraw from life, ready to go, needing no oath from anyone and no witness. Be cheerful, too. Don't look for outside help or the peace that depends on other people. Stand upright on your own. Don't need others to hold you up.

If you find anything in human life better than justice, truth, self-control, and courage — or to put it differently, anything better than your own mind's satisfaction when it enables you to act according to right reason, and to accept whatever you've been given without choosing it — if you find something better than that, then turn to it with your whole soul and enjoy the best thing you've found. But if nothing turns out to be better than the god within you — the one that has brought all your appetites under its authority, that carefully examines every impression, that has freed itself from the pull of the senses (as Socrates said), that has submitted itself to the gods and genuinely cares for other people — if everything else seems smaller and less valuable, then give ground to nothing else. Because once you start drifting toward some other thing, you won't be able to give undivided devotion to what is truly and properly your own good. It's wrong to let anything compete with what is rationally and practically good — not the praise of crowds, not power, not pleasure. These things might seem compatible with the higher good at first, in small doses, but they quickly take over and carry you away. So choose freely and simply: choose the better, and hold to it. "But what's useful is the better." Fine — if it's useful to you as a rational being, hold to it. But if it's only useful to you as an animal, be honest about that, and keep your judgement clear. Just make sure you're testing it by a reliable method.

Never value anything as profitable if it will force you to break your word, to lose your self-respect, to hate another person, to be suspicious, to curse, to act like a fraud, to want anything that requires walls and closed doors. Someone who has chosen, above everything, their own intelligence, the god within them, and devotion to its excellence — that person doesn't play the tragic hero, doesn't groan, doesn't need isolation or crowds. Best of all, they will live without chasing life or running from death. Whether their soul inhabits the body for a longer or shorter time, it makes no difference to them. If they had to leave right now, they'd go as easily as if they were heading off to do anything else that can be done with dignity and good order. The only thing they watch for, their whole life through, is that their mind not wander from what belongs to a rational being and a member of a community.

In the mind of someone who has been refined and purified, you'll find no festering, no infection, no wound sealed over with a false skin. Fate doesn't catch them with their life unfinished, like an actor who walks off the stage before the play is done. There is nothing servile in them, nothing affected, nothing too tightly attached or too detached. Nothing that needs to hide.

Guard the faculty that forms your judgements. Everything depends on it — whether your rational mind will hold a belief that contradicts nature and the makeup of a rational being. This faculty is what makes possible freedom from rash judgement, good will toward other people, and obedience to the gods.

So throw everything else away and hold to these few things. And remember: each of us lives only in this present moment — an indivisible point in time — and the rest of life is either already gone or completely uncertain. The time any person lives is brief. The corner of the earth where they live is small. And even the longest fame after death is short — passed along by one generation of poor mortals to the next, people who will die soon enough themselves and who don't even know who they are, let alone someone who died long ago.

One more discipline to add to the ones already mentioned: always define and describe whatever presents itself to your mind. See it clearly for what it really is — stripped bare, in its entirety. Call it by its proper name. Name the elements that compose it and the elements into which it will dissolve. Nothing lifts the mind like the ability to examine every object that life puts in front of you, methodically and truthfully — to look at each thing and see what kind of universe it belongs to, what role it plays in that universe, what value it has in relation to the whole and what value it has for a human being, who is a citizen of the highest city, the one in which all other cities are like households. Ask: what is this thing? What is it made of? How long is it naturally meant to last? What virtue does it call for in me — gentleness, courage, honesty, trustworthiness, simplicity, self-sufficiency, or something else?

So with each thing, say to yourself: this comes from the divine. This follows from the weaving of fate and the interplay of chance and coincidence. And this comes from a fellow human being, a relative, a partner — though one who may not know what is truly in accordance with their own nature. But I know. And so I treat them with the natural kindness and justice that our bond demands. At the same time, when it comes to things that are morally neutral, I try to assess each one at its true value.

If you work at what is in front of you, following right reason earnestly, steadily, calmly, without letting anything else pull you away — and if you keep the divine part of yourself pure, as if you might have to give it back at any moment — if you hold to this, expecting nothing, fearing nothing, content with your present activity according to nature, and with a fierce honesty in every word you speak, you will live well. And no one in the world can stop you.

The way doctors keep their instruments and scalpels at hand for emergencies — keep your principles at hand for understanding both the divine and the human, and for doing everything, even the smallest thing, with a sense of how the two are bound together. You will never do well by others without keeping the divine in view. And you'll never do right by the divine without keeping your duty to others in mind.

Stop wandering. You're not going to reread your old notebooks, or the histories of the ancient Greeks and Romans, or that collection of passages you were saving for your old age. Push on toward the finish line. Let go of empty hopes. Come to your own rescue — if you care about yourself at all — while you still can.

People don't realize how many things are meant by words like stealing, sowing, buying, keeping still, seeing what needs to be done. This kind of seeing isn't done with the eyes. It requires a different kind of vision.

Body, soul, mind. To the body: sensations. To the soul: desires. To the mind: principles. The ability to receive sense-impressions belongs even to animals. The pull of desire tugs at wild beasts, at men who have made themselves into women, at a Phalaris and a Nero. Having a mind that reasons its way toward what seems advantageous — that belongs even to people who don't believe in the gods, who betray their country, who do unspeakable things behind closed doors. If all of that is shared with the creatures and people I've just listed, then what remains that is distinctive to the good person? It is this: to be pleased and content with whatever happens, and with the thread that has been spun for them. To never pollute the god within their breast or crowd it with a mob of impressions, but to keep it calm, and follow it obediently — as one follows a god. Never saying anything false. Never doing anything unjust. And if every other person on earth refuses to believe they live simply, modestly, and cheerfully — they are not angry at any of them, and they don't step off the path that leads to the end of life, where a person should arrive pure, at peace, ready to go, and without any force needed to make them accept their lot.

Book IV

Your rational mind, when it's working as nature intended, is built to adapt to whatever happens. It doesn't need any specific set of circumstances. It moves toward its purpose within whatever conditions it finds — and it turns obstacles into fuel. The way a strong fire does. A small flame would be snuffed out by what gets thrown on it. But a great fire seizes on what's heaped onto it, consumes it, and rises higher because of it.

Let nothing be done without a purpose, and never act contrary to sound principles.

People look for retreats in the countryside, at the shore, in the mountains. And you want this as much as anyone. But this is the mark of an ordinary mind, because you can retreat into yourself anytime you want. There is no retreat more quiet or more free from disturbance than a person's own soul — especially if they have the kind of thoughts inside them that bring instant calm the moment they look inward. And by calm, I mean nothing other than a well-ordered mind. So give yourself this retreat regularly, and renew yourself. Keep your core principles short and fundamental — the kind that, as soon as you return to them, are enough to wash away all the frustration and send you back without resentment toward whatever you have to face.

What are you frustrated with? The badness of people? Remind yourself: rational beings exist for each other. Endurance is part of justice. People do wrong without meaning to. Think of how many people — after all their mutual hostility, suspicion, hatred, fighting — are now stretched out dead, reduced to ashes. Let it go.

Or maybe you're dissatisfied with the lot you've been given by the universe? Then revisit the choice: either there is a providence, or there are atoms — random chance. Remember the arguments that the world is a kind of community. Let it go.

Or maybe bodily things still have a grip on you? Remember that your rational mind, once it has drawn itself apart and recognized its own power, doesn't mix with the movements of the body, whether gentle or violent. And remember everything you've heard and accepted about pain and pleasure. Let it go.

Or maybe the craving for fame torments you? Look at how quickly everything is forgotten. Look at the abyss of infinite time stretching in both directions from this moment. Listen to the hollowness of applause. Consider how fickle and undiscriminating the people who give praise are, and how tiny the patch of earth on which it echoes. The whole earth is a point. And this little corner where you live — how small is it? And how many people are here, and what sort of people, to praise you?

So here's the bottom line: remember to retreat into this little territory of your own. Above all, don't strain or force yourself. Be free. Look at things as a human being, as a citizen, as a mortal creature. And among the principles you keep closest at hand, let there be these two. First: things don't touch the soul. They're outside it and have no way in. Your disturbances come only from the judgement you form inside yourself. Second: everything you see is already in the process of changing. It will soon be gone. Keep in mind how many of these transformations you've already witnessed.

The universe is transformation. Life is judgement.

If our capacity to think is shared, then so is reason — the thing that makes us rational beings. If so, then the reason that tells us what to do and what not to do is also shared. If so, there is a common law. If so, we are fellow citizens. If so, we belong to the same community. If so, the world is, in a sense, a single state. What other common community could the whole human race claim membership in? And it's from there — from this shared political community — that our capacity for thought and reason and law comes to us. Where else? Just as the earthy part of me was given from some portion of earth, the watery part from some other element, the breath from one source, the hot and fiery from yet another — because nothing comes from nothing, and nothing returns to nothing — so the mind too must come from somewhere.

Death is the same kind of thing as birth — a mystery of nature. A coming together of elements, and a coming apart. There's nothing in it to be ashamed of. Nothing contrary to the nature of a thinking being. Nothing against the logic of how we're made.

It's natural for certain people to behave a certain way. It couldn't be otherwise. Wishing it were different is like wishing a fig tree didn't produce sap. In any case, keep this in mind: in a very short time, both you and he will be dead. And soon after, not even your names will survive.

Take away your judgement and the complaint "I have been harmed" is gone. Take away the complaint "I have been harmed" and the harm itself is gone.

What doesn't make a person worse doesn't make their life worse either, and does them no harm — from without or within.

The nature of what is universally beneficial was compelled to bring this about.

Consider that everything which happens, happens justly. Watch carefully and you'll find it's true. I don't just mean in terms of the continuous chain of events, but in terms of actual justice — as if someone were assigning each thing its proper due. So keep watching, as you've begun. And whatever you do, do it in conjunction with this: being good, in the true sense of the word. Hold to this in every action.

Don't see things the way the person who wrongs you sees them, or the way they want you to see them. See them as they truly are.

Keep two rules always ready. The first: do only what your rational mind — the mind that governs and makes laws — suggests for the benefit of others. The second: change your belief if someone corrects you and gives you a good reason. But the change should always come from genuine persuasion — a sense of what is just, or what benefits the common good. Not because it seems pleasant or will improve your reputation.

Do you have reason? — I do. — Then why don't you use it? If reason is doing its job, what more do you need?

You've existed as a part of the whole. You will vanish into what produced you. Or rather, you'll be taken back into its creative energy through transformation.

Many grains of incense on the same altar. One falls in sooner, another later. It makes no difference.

In ten days, the people who think you're a beast or an ape will think you're a god — if you return to your principles and to the practice of reason.

Don't act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death is hanging over you. While you're alive — while you still can — be good.

Think of all the trouble a person avoids by not watching what their neighbor says, does, or thinks — and instead paying attention only to what they themselves are doing, making sure it's just and right. As Agathon says: don't look around at the crooked morals of others. Run straight along the line without wandering from it.

Whoever craves fame after death doesn't realize that every person who remembers them will also die very soon. And then the next generation after that, until the whole memory is extinguished — passed along like a flame through people who admire foolishly and then perish themselves. But say the people who remember you were immortal and the memory lasted forever. What's that to you? And I don't just mean: what is it to you once you're dead? What is it to you now, while you're alive? What good is praise — except insofar as it has some practical use? You're rejecting the gift nature has for you right now, while you cling to something else...

Everything that is beautiful in any way is beautiful in itself and complete in itself. Praise is no part of it. Nothing becomes better or worse by being praised. This applies to things commonly called beautiful too — material objects, works of art. Does anything truly beautiful need something added? No more than justice does, or truth, or kindness, or modesty. Which of these becomes beautiful by being praised, or is ruined by being criticized? Does an emerald lose its quality if no one admires it? What about gold, ivory, purple, a lyre, a dagger, a flower, a bush?

If souls continue to exist after death, how does the air hold them all, from all of eternity? Well, how does the earth hold all the bodies that have been buried since the beginning of time? Just as bodies, after remaining intact for a while — however long — decompose and make room for other bodies, so souls released into the air, after a period of time, change form, diffuse, and become fire again — taken back into the creative energy of the universe — and in this way they make room for fresh souls. That's one answer, if we assume souls persist. But we should also consider the sheer number of bodies involved — not just humans buried in the ground, but all the animals eaten daily by us and by other creatures. What a number consumed, practically buried inside the bodies of those who feed on them. And yet the earth absorbs them through their transformation into blood, into air, into fire.

How do you investigate the truth in this? By dividing things into what is material and what gives them form.

Don't let yourself be whirled about. In every impulse, attend to justice. In every impression, preserve your capacity for clear understanding.

Everything that harmonizes with you, O Universe, harmonizes with me. Nothing comes too early or too late for me that comes in time for you. Everything is fruit to me that your seasons bring, O Nature. From you all things come, in you all things exist, to you all things return. The poet says, "Dear city of Cecrops." Won't you say, "Dear city of Zeus"?

Keep yourself to a few things, the philosopher says, if you want to be at peace. But I think it's better to say: do what is necessary. Do whatever the nature of a social being requires, and do it the way it requires. This brings not only the peace that comes from doing well, but the peace that comes from doing few things. Because most of what we say and do is unnecessary. Cut it away, and you'll have more time and less anxiety. So on every occasion, ask yourself: is this one of the unnecessary things? And cut away not only unnecessary actions, but unnecessary thoughts — because then the pointless actions won't follow.

Try the life of the good person and see how it fits you: the life of someone who is satisfied with their share of the whole, satisfied with their own just actions and generous spirit.

Have you seen that side of things? Now look at this side. Don't disturb yourself. Make yourself simple. Is someone doing wrong? They're doing it to themselves. Has something happened to you? Fine. Everything that happens has been apportioned and spun out for you by the universe since the beginning. In a word: life is short. Make the most of the present through reason and justice. And keep your head even during downtime.

Either this is a well-ordered universe, or it's a chaos thrown together — but still, somehow, a universe. Can there really be order inside you and disorder in the whole? Especially when everything is so deeply separated yet interconnected, so distinct yet bound together in sympathy?

A dark character, a soft character, a stubborn character, bestial, childish, animal, stupid, counterfeit, crude, fraudulent, tyrannical.

If someone is a stranger to the universe who doesn't know what's in it, they're no less a stranger who doesn't know what's happening in it. A person who runs away from social reason is a fugitive. A person who shuts the eyes of their understanding is blind. A person who depends on others and can't find in themselves everything needed for life is a beggar. A person who withdraws from the reason that binds our common nature — unhappy with what happens — is an abscess on the universe. Because the same nature that produces what happens also produced you. A person who tears their own soul away from the soul of all rational beings, which is one — that person is a limb cut off from the body of the state.

One philosopher has no tunic. Another has no book. Here's a third, half-naked. "I have no bread," he says, "yet I hold to reason." And I — I get no living from my learning, yet I hold to reason too.

Love the craft you've learned, humble as it may be, and be content with it. Pass through the rest of your life like someone who has entrusted everything they have to the gods with their whole soul — making yourself neither the tyrant nor the slave of any person.

Think of the times of Vespasian. You'll see all the same things: people marrying, raising children, getting sick, dying, making war, celebrating, trading, farming, flattering, pushing their own interests, being suspicious, scheming, wishing someone would die, grumbling about how things are, falling in love, hoarding money, chasing political office and power. And their whole lives — gone. Completely gone. Now move forward to Trajan's time. Again, all the same. That life, too, is gone. Look at any epoch, any nation — the same pattern. So many people who threw themselves into great efforts and then fell and were dissolved back into the elements. But most of all, think about people you've known personally — people who distracted themselves with trivial things, who failed to do what their own nature required of them, who failed to hold to that and be satisfied with it. And here's the key: the attention you give to anything should be proportional to its real value. That way you won't be frustrated — because you'll never have spent more time on minor things than they deserved.

Words that were once common are now obscure. In the same way, the names of those who were once famous are practically archaic: Camillus, Caeso, Volesus, Leonnatus — and soon after, Scipio and Cato, then Augustus, then Hadrian and Antoninus, too. Everything fades fast and becomes a mere story, and before long, total oblivion buries it. And I'm talking about people who blazed with remarkable brilliance. The rest are forgotten the moment they stop breathing — no one even mentions them. What, in the end, is eternal remembrance? Nothing. So what's worth taking seriously? Only this: thoughts that are just, actions that serve others, words that never lie, and a disposition that welcomes everything that happens as necessary, as familiar, as flowing from the same source and principle.

Give yourself willingly to Clotho, and let her spin your thread into whatever she will.

Everything lasts only a day — both what remembers and what is remembered.

Notice constantly that all things happen through change. Train yourself to see that the nature of the universe loves nothing so much as to change what exists and make new things in the same pattern. Everything that exists is, in a way, the seed of what will come from it. But if you think "seeds" only means what goes into the ground or into a womb, your imagination is too narrow.

You'll be dead soon. And you are not yet simple. Not yet free from disturbance. Not yet beyond the suspicion that external things can harm you. Not yet kind to everyone. And you haven't yet placed all of wisdom in acting justly.

Examine the guiding principles of others — even the wise. What do they avoid? What do they pursue?

What is bad for you doesn't exist in the rational mind of another person. It doesn't exist in any change or condition of your body, either. So where is it? It's in the part of you that forms judgements about what is bad. So let that part stop forming such judgements, and all is well. Even if the body — its nearest companion — is burned, infected, or rotting, let the part that judges these things be still. Let it conclude that nothing is truly bad or good if it can happen equally to a bad person and a good one. Because whatever happens equally to someone living against nature and someone living in harmony with nature is itself neither natural nor unnatural.

Always see the universe as one living being — one substance, one soul. Notice how everything refers back to a single awareness: the awareness of this one being. How everything acts through a single impulse. How everything cooperates as the cause of everything else. Notice the continuous spinning of the thread. The weaving of the web.

You are a little soul carrying around a corpse, as Epictetus used to say.

It is no evil for things to undergo change. It is no good for things to exist as a result of change.

Time is like a river of events — a violent current. As soon as something appears, it's swept away. Something else takes its place. That, too, will be swept away.

Everything that happens is as familiar and predictable as the rose in spring and the fruit in summer. This goes for disease, death, slander, conspiracy — everything that delights or troubles foolish people.

In the sequence of events, what follows is always connected to what came before. It's not a random list of disconnected items strung together by mere necessity. It's a rational relationship. And just as the things that exist are arranged in harmony with one another, the things that come into being don't show mere succession — they show a profound kinship.

Always remember what Heraclitus said: the death of earth is to become water. The death of water is to become air. The death of air is to become fire. And back again. Think, too, of the person who forgets where the road leads. Remember that people quarrel with the very thing they are most constantly in contact with: the reason that governs the universe. The things they encounter every day strike them as strange. Remember that we shouldn't act and speak as if we were asleep — though even in sleep we seem to act and speak. And we shouldn't act like children who simply copy their parents, doing things "because that's what we were taught."

If a god told you, "You will die tomorrow — or at the latest, the day after" — you wouldn't care much whether it was one day or two, unless you were absurdly petty. The difference is tiny. Now apply the same thinking: don't consider it a great thing to die in some number of years rather than tomorrow.

Think about it. How many doctors are dead — after spending years furrowing their brows over the sick. How many astrologers — after announcing other people's deaths with great ceremony. How many philosophers — after endless speeches about death and immortality. How many heroes — after killing thousands. How many tyrants — after wielding power over human life with monstrous arrogance, as though they themselves were immortal. How many whole cities are dead — Helice, Pompeii, Herculaneum, and countless others. And add to the list everyone you've personally known. One person laid out a neighbor for burial, then was buried themselves — and someone else buried them. All in a short span of time. The point is this: look at human life for what it is. Fleeting. Worthless in substance. Yesterday, a drop of mucus. Tomorrow, a mummy or a pile of ash. So pass through this brief moment of time in harmony with nature, and end your journey content — the way a ripe olive falls from the tree, grateful to the earth that bore it and thankful for the branch that carried it.

Be like the promontory against which the waves break endlessly. It stands firm, and the churning water around it is stilled.

"I'm unhappy because this happened to me." — No. Say instead: "I'm fortunate, because even though this happened to me, I remain free from pain. The present doesn't crush me. The future doesn't frighten me." This could have happened to anyone. But not everyone would have carried it without pain. So why call the event a misfortune rather than calling your endurance good fortune? Can you really call something a misfortune if it doesn't violate human nature? And can something violate human nature if it doesn't contradict what nature intends for us? Well, you know what nature intends. Does this event prevent you from being just, generous, self-controlled, clear-headed, careful in your judgements, honest? Does it prevent you from having modesty, freedom, and everything else that allows human nature to fulfill itself? So remember this, whenever something pushes you toward bitterness: this is not a misfortune. To bear it well is good fortune.

It's a common technique, but still useful: when you want to get past your fear of death, run through the list of people who clung to life. What did they gain over those who died young? In the end, they all lie in a grave somewhere — Cadicianus, Fabius, Julianus, Lepidus, and others like them — who carried out many funerals before being carried out themselves. The gap between birth and death is small. And look at the conditions of that gap: what kind of trouble fills it, what kind of company, what a feeble body you endure it in. Don't treat life as something of great value. Look behind you at the immensity of past time. Look ahead at the other infinity stretching forward. Faced with all that, what's the difference between a life of three days and a life of three generations?

Always take the shortest route. The shortest route is the one in harmony with nature. So say and do everything according to the soundest reason. A purpose like this frees you from trouble, from conflict, from every kind of pretense and display.

Book V

In the morning, when you don't want to get up, tell yourself this: I'm getting up to do the work of a human being. Why am I resentful if I'm about to do the things I exist for — the things I was brought into the world to do? Was I made for this, to huddle under the blankets and stay warm? — But it's more comfortable. — So you exist to feel comfortable? Not to act, not to exert yourself? Look at the little plants, the birds, the ants, the spiders, the bees — all working together to build their part of the ordered universe. And you don't want to do the work of a human being? You won't rush to do what your own nature demands? — But rest is necessary too. — Of course it is. Nature has set limits on rest, though — just as she's set limits on eating and drinking. But you blow right past those limits, past what's sufficient. When it comes to action, though, you stop short of what you're capable of. You don't really love yourself. If you did, you'd love your nature and what it asks of you. People who love their work exhaust themselves at it — unwashed, without food. But you value your own nature less than the woodworker values his craft, or the dancer her art, or the miser his money, or the fame-seeker his little moment of glory. When those people are gripped by something, they'd rather skip eating and sleeping than stop perfecting what they care about. And you think the work of serving society is less worthy? Less deserving of your effort?

How easy it is to push away every impression that is unwelcome or distracting, and to be immediately at peace.

Judge every word and action that is in harmony with nature as worthy of you. Don't be turned aside by the criticism or the comments that follow from others. If something is good to do or say, don't consider it beneath you. Those people have their own guiding principles and their own impulses to follow. Don't look at that. Go straight ahead, following your own nature and the nature that we all share. The path is the same for both.

I make my way through the things that happen according to nature, until I fall and rest at last — breathing out into the same air I've been breathing in each day, falling back upon the same earth from which my father drew the seed, my mother the blood, my nurse the milk. The same earth that has fed me and given me drink for all these years, that bears my weight when I walk on it and endure the thousand ways I take it for granted.

You tell yourself: people won't admire you for your brilliance. — Fine. But there are plenty of other things you can't excuse yourself from by saying, "I'm not naturally gifted for those." Show the qualities that are entirely in your power: sincerity, seriousness, the willingness to work hard, indifference to pleasure, contentment with what you have, the ability to get by with little, kindness, honesty, the refusal to be excessive, freedom from pettiness, real depth of character. Don't you see how many qualities you could display right now — qualities where you have no excuse of natural inability? And yet you stay below the mark by choice. Or is it because nature made you defective that you're forced to grumble, to be stingy, to flatter, to blame your body, to try to please people, to show off, to be so restless in your mind? No, by the gods. You could have freed yourself from all of that long ago. The only charge that might stick is that you're a bit slow — a bit dull in understanding. But even that you should work on. Not ignore it. And not take pleasure in your dullness either.

One person does someone a favor and immediately keeps a ledger of it. Another doesn't keep a ledger but still thinks of the other person as a debtor — and is privately aware of what he's done. A third barely even knows what he's done. He's like a vine that has produced grapes and asks for nothing more. A horse that has run. A dog that has tracked the game. A bee that has made honey. A person who has done a good thing doesn't shout for an audience. They move on to the next act, the way a vine goes on to produce grapes again in season. — So you should be one of those who does this almost without noticing? — Yes. — But wait — isn't some awareness needed? They say it's part of being a social creature to recognize that you're acting socially, and even to want your partner to notice. — What you're saying is true, but you're misunderstanding the point. That's exactly why you'll end up like the first group I mentioned — they, too, are misled by a kind of plausible reasoning. But if you're willing to really understand what's being said here, don't worry — you won't neglect any social act because of it.

A prayer of the Athenians: Rain, rain, dear Zeus, on the plowed fields and the plains of the Athenians. — If we're going to pray at all, we should pray like this: simply and honestly.

Just as we understand it when someone says that a doctor prescribed horseback riding, or cold baths, or going barefoot for a patient — so we should understand it when someone says that the nature of the universe prescribed disease, or injury, or loss, or something like it for a person. In the doctor's case, "prescribed" means something like: he arranged this as something conducive to the patient's health. In nature's case, it means: what happens to each person is arranged in a way that suits their destiny. We say things "suit" us the way builders say squared stones "suit" a wall or a pyramid — when they fit together in a harmonious connection. Because there is one harmony running through all of it. And just as the universe is assembled from all physical things into the particular body it is, so out of all existing causes, destiny is assembled into the particular course it takes. Even people with no philosophical training understand this instinctively — they say, "Fate brought this to him." So: this was brought; this was prescribed. Let us accept it, the way we accept what a doctor prescribes. Plenty of his remedies are unpleasant too, but we endure them hoping for health. Let the fulfillment of what the common nature judges to be good stand on the same footing as your own health. Accept everything that happens, even when it seems harsh, because it leads to the health of the universe and the flourishing of the whole. The universe would not have brought this upon anyone if it weren't useful for the whole. No nature — whatever it may be — causes anything unsuitable for what it governs. So there are two reasons to be content with what happens to you. First: it was done for you, prescribed for you, and in a way connected to you, spun with your destiny from the very first causes. Second: even what comes to each individual is, for the power that governs the universe, a source of well-being, of wholeness — of its very continuation. Because the integrity of the whole is damaged if you cut off any link in the chain, whether of parts or of causes. And you do cut it off, as far as it's in your power, whenever you're resentful — whenever you try, in a sense, to push anything out of the way.

Don't be disgusted with yourself. Don't be discouraged. Don't give up if you fail to act on the right principles every time. When you fall short, come back to them. Be satisfied if most of what you do is consistent with your nature as a human being. And love the thing you're returning to. Don't go back to philosophy the way a student reports to a stern teacher. Go back the way someone with sore eyes reaches for a sponge and cool water. The way someone applies a bandage or a poultice. This way, you won't be fighting reason — you'll be resting in it. And remember: philosophy asks only for what your nature already requires. It's you who keep wanting something that goes against nature. — But surely what I'm doing is more pleasant? — Isn't that exactly how pleasure deceives us? Consider whether generosity, freedom, simplicity, calm, and reverence aren't more pleasant. And what is more pleasant than wisdom itself — when you think about the steadiness and smooth course of everything that flows from genuine understanding?

Things are so deeply tangled that they've struck philosophers — and not ordinary ones — as completely beyond understanding. Even the Stoics admit they're hard to make sense of. And every conviction we hold is subject to change — because where is the person who never changes their mind? So turn your attention to the things themselves. Consider how short-lived they are. How trivial. How easily possessed by worthless people. Then look at the characters of the people around you. Even the most agreeable of them are hard to endure — to say nothing of how hard it is to endure yourself. In all this darkness and mess, in this constant flux of matter and time, of motion and things in motion, I can't think of a single thing worth prizing highly or pursuing seriously. On the contrary: comfort yourself, and wait patiently for the natural end — whatever it turns out to be. And rest on only these two things. First: nothing will happen to me that doesn't conform to the nature of the universe. Second: it's in my power to never act against the god within me. No one can force me to do that.

What am I using my mind for right now? Ask yourself this at every moment. Examine yourself: what is happening in the part of me they call your rational mind? Whose mind do I have right now? A child's? A teenager's? A timid person's? A tyrant's? A domestic animal's? A wild beast's?

What sort of things the crowd considers good — you can learn from this. If someone truly conceives of prudence, self-control, justice, and courage as good, then after grasping those, they couldn't bear to listen to anything that clashes with what is truly good. The joke wouldn't land. But if someone first conceives as good the things the crowd chases, they'll hear the comic poet's punchline and take it in stride — as a fitting and witty observation. So even ordinary people sense the difference. Otherwise, the joke wouldn't offend in the first case, while in the second we laugh and accept it as clever. So here's the question: should we really value and call good the things that, once you've obtained them, the comic poet could fairly say of you — that you're so loaded with abundance you can't find a place to relieve yourself?

I am made of form and matter. Neither one will be destroyed into nothingness, just as neither one came into being from nothing. Every part of me will be reassigned by change into some part of the universe, and that part will change into another, and so on, forever. I came into being through this kind of change, and so did the ones who made me — going back without limit. And there's nothing wrong with saying this, even if the universe runs in definite cycles.

Reason and the art of reasoning are self-sufficient powers. They start from their own principle and make their way to the end they've set for themselves. That's why right actions are called katorthoseis — they proceed by the right road.

None of these things should be called yours if they don't belong to you as a human being. They're not required of you. Human nature doesn't promise them. They aren't the means by which human nature reaches its fulfillment. The end of human life doesn't consist in them, and neither does what helps us toward that end — namely, the good. Besides, if any of these things truly belonged to a person, it wouldn't be right to reject them or resist them. And no one would be praised for proving they don't need them. No one who gave them up would be called good — if they were actually good. But as it stands, the more of these things a person lets go of, the more patiently they endure the loss — the better a person they are.

Your habitual thoughts shape the character of your mind. The soul takes on the color of its thoughts. So dye it with a steady succession of thoughts like these. For instance: wherever a person can live, they can live well. And if they must live in a palace — well then, they can live well in a palace. And think about this: everything has been made for a purpose. It's drawn toward that purpose. Its fulfillment is in what it's drawn toward. And where the fulfillment is, there the advantage and the good of each thing are found. Now, the good of a rational creature is community. We've already shown that we're made for one another. Isn't it obvious that lesser things exist for the sake of higher things? And among things that have life, those with reason are highest.

It's madness to seek what's impossible. And it's impossible for bad people not to do things like this.

Nothing happens to anyone that they aren't naturally equipped to bear. The same thing happens to someone else, and either because they don't realize it's happened or because they want to show their strength, they stand firm and come through unharmed. Isn't it a shame, then, that ignorance and vanity should be stronger than real wisdom?

Things themselves don't touch the soul. Not in the slightest. They have no access to it. They can't turn it or move it. The soul turns and moves itself alone. Whatever judgements it thinks it should form, it shapes its own reality accordingly.

In one way, other people are the closest things to me — insofar as I must do good to them and put up with them. But insofar as some of them get in the way of what I'm meant to do, they become just another indifferent thing — no different from the sun, the wind, or a wild animal. Those things might block my actions, but they can't block my intentions or my inner state, because the mind has the power to adapt and to redirect. It converts every obstacle to its activity into an aid. What blocks the road becomes the way forward.

Revere whatever is best in the universe: the thing that makes use of all things and governs all things. In the same way, revere whatever is best in yourself — which is the same in kind. It's the part of you that makes use of everything else. Your life is directed by it.

What does no harm to the state does no harm to the citizen. Whenever you think you see harm, apply this rule: if the state isn't harmed by it, then neither am I. And if the state is harmed, don't be angry at the person causing the harm. Show them where their mistake is.

Think often about the speed at which things pass and disappear — both what already exists and what is just coming into being. The substance of things is like a river in constant flow. Their activities are in perpetual change. Their causes work in endless variety. Almost nothing holds still. And consider what lies right beside you: this infinite abyss of past and future, into which everything vanishes. Isn't anyone who gets puffed up about these things, or tormented and made miserable by them, a fool? They trouble you only for a moment. And a short one at that.

Think of the whole of matter — and your share of it is tiny. Think of the whole of time — and your allotted piece is a brief, indivisible instant. Think of what's been fixed by destiny — and how small a part of it you are.

Does someone do me wrong? That's their problem. They have their own character, their own actions. I have what the universal nature wants me to have right now. And I'm doing what my own nature wants me to do right now.

Let your rational mind — the part that leads and governs — stay undisturbed by the movements of the body, whether pleasure or pain. Don't let it merge with them. Let it draw a boundary around itself and keep those sensations in their own domain. But when those sensations rise up to the mind through the natural sympathy that exists in a unified body, don't try to fight the feeling — it's natural. Just don't let your rational mind add the judgement that the sensation is good or bad.

Live with the gods. And you do live with the gods whenever you show them that your soul is satisfied with what has been given to it, and that it does everything the god within you wants — that portion of himself that Zeus has given each person as a guardian and guide. And this is every person's understanding and reason.

Are you angry at someone whose armpits stink? Are you angry at someone whose breath is foul? What good will your anger do? He has that mouth. He has those armpits. That kind of body is bound to produce that kind of smell. — But the person has reason! He could figure out what's offensive if he tried! — Good for you and your insight. Then you have reason too. Use your rationality to stir up his. Point out the problem. Advise him. If he listens, you'll cure him, and no anger was needed. You're not a tragic actor. You're not a prostitute.

You intend to live a certain way after you leave here — so live that way now. But if people won't let you, then leave life altogether — but as if you're suffering no real harm. The house is full of smoke, and I'm leaving. Why treat it as some great hardship? But as long as nothing like that drives me out, I stay. I am free. No one will prevent me from doing what I choose. And I choose to do what the nature of a rational and social being requires.

The intelligence behind the universe is social. It made the lesser for the sake of the greater, and fitted the greater to one another. You can see how it has arranged, coordinated, and assigned to everything its proper share, and brought the best things into harmony with one another.

How have you treated the gods so far? Your parents, your brothers and sisters, your children, your teachers, those who raised you, your friends, your family? Consider whether you've treated all of them in such a way that this could truly be said of you:

Never has wronged a man in deed or word.

And remember how much you've been through. How much you've been able to endure. That the story of your life is now full and your service is complete. How many beautiful things you've seen. How many pleasures and pains you've risen above. How many so-called honors you've let pass. How many difficult people you've treated with kindness.

Why do ignorant and unskilled souls disturb someone who has real knowledge? What soul has true knowledge? The one that knows the beginning and the end, and understands the reason that runs through all things and governs the universe across all of time, in recurring cycles.

Soon — very soon — you will be ashes. Or a skeleton. A name, or not even a name. And a name is just sound and echo. The things most valued in life are hollow, rotten, trivial — little dogs snapping at each other, little children fighting, laughing, and then immediately crying. Fidelity, modesty, justice, truth — they've fled

Up to Olympus from the wide-spread earth.

So what still keeps you here? Everything you perceive through the senses is shifting and unstable. Your organs of perception are dull and easily fooled. Your poor soul is just an exhalation from blood. And reputation, in a world like this, means nothing. So why not wait calmly for the end — whether it's extinction or a change to some other state? And until that time, what do you really need? Only this: to honor the gods and speak well of them. To do good to other people. To practice tolerance and self-restraint. And as for everything beyond the limits of this body and breath — to remember that it's neither yours nor in your power.

You can live a life of steady happiness, if you follow the right path in thought and action. Two things are true of the soul of god and of every rational being alike: nothing outside can block them, and their good consists in a just disposition and just action — and in letting every desire end there.

If this is not my own wrongdoing, and not a consequence of my own wrongdoing, and the common good isn't damaged — why should it trouble me? And what's the actual harm to the common good?

Don't be swept along recklessly by surface impressions. Help everyone to the extent of your ability and their need. And if they've lost something that falls among things that are morally neutral, don't treat it as a real injury. That's a bad habit. Be like the old man who, when leaving, asked for his foster-child's top back — but never forgot that it was just a top.

When you're up on the speaker's platform, shouting — have you forgotten, friend, what all this really is? — Yes, but these things matter enormously to the people listening. — And that makes you a fool for caring about them too? — I was once a fortunate man, but somehow I lost it. — But being truly fortunate means giving yourself a good fortune. And a good fortune is a well-disposed soul, good impulses, and good actions.

Book VI

The substance of the universe is obedient and yielding. The reason that governs it has no cause for doing evil — it has no malice, it does no harm to anything, and nothing is injured by it. All things are made and brought to completion according to this reason.

Let it make no difference to you whether you're cold or warm, if you're doing your duty. Whether you're drowsy or well-rested. Whether people speak badly of you or praise you. Whether you're dying or doing something else entirely. Dying is just one of the acts of life. So in this act too, it's enough to do well what's in front of you.

Look within. Don't let the true nature of anything, or its real value, escape you.

All existing things will soon change. They'll either be reduced to vapor — if all substance is one — or they'll be scattered.

The reason that governs the universe knows its own disposition, what it does, and what material it works with.

The best revenge is not becoming like the person who wronged you.

Take pleasure in one thing and rest in it: passing from one act of service to another, with God in mind.

Your rational mind is the thing that rouses and redirects itself. It makes itself whatever it chooses to be, and it makes everything that happens appear to it however it wills.

Everything that happens is accomplished in conformity with the nature of the universe. It certainly isn't in conformity with any other nature — not one that contains this nature from the outside, nor one contained within it, nor one external and independent of it.

The universe is either a random mess — things tangled up and eventually falling apart — or it's unity, order, and providence. If it's the first, why would I want to linger in this accidental heap of chaos? Why would I care about anything other than how I'll eventually return to the earth? And why am I disturbed? The scattering of my elements will happen no matter what I do. But if the second is true, then I feel reverence. I stand firm. I trust the one who governs.

When circumstances force you into agitation, return to yourself quickly. Don't stay out of tune any longer than you have to. You'll gain more mastery over the harmony by continually returning to it.

If you had both a stepmother and a mother, you'd be dutiful to your stepmother — but you'd still keep going back to your mother. That's what the court and philosophy are for you now. The court is your stepmother, philosophy your mother. Come back to her often. Rest in her. She's the reason what you deal with at court seems bearable, and the reason you seem bearable at court.

When you have meat set before you, think: this is the dead body of a fish. This is the dead body of a bird or a pig. This Falernian wine — just a little grape juice. This purple robe — some sheep's wool dyed with the blood of a shellfish. These are the real impressions. They reach straight through to the things themselves and show you what they actually are. Do this with everything in life. When things seem most deserving of your admiration, strip them bare. Look at their worthlessness. Tear away the fine language that inflates them. Outward show is a powerful deceiver of your rational mind — it cheats you most when you're most convinced you're engaged in something worthwhile. Consider what Crates said of Xenocrates himself.

Most of the things the crowd admires belong to the most basic category — things held together by mere physical cohesion or organic growth: stones, wood, fig trees, vines, olives. People who are a step above that admire things held together by a living principle — flocks, herds. People more refined still admire things held together by a rational soul — though not a universal rationality, just the kind that's skilled in a craft, or clever in some other way, or simply rich enough to own many slaves. But the person who values what a truly rational soul can be — a soul fit for community and civic life — cares about nothing else. Above all, they keep their own soul in a condition of rational, socially engaged activity. And they cooperate toward this end with others who share the same nature.

Some things are rushing into existence while others are rushing out of it. And of what's coming into being, part is already gone. Constant movement and change are renewing the world, just as the unbroken flow of time keeps renewing the infinite span of ages. In this flowing stream, where nothing stands still, what could you possibly set a high price on? It would be like falling in love with a sparrow flying past — and already it's out of sight. That's what life itself is like — an exhalation of blood and a drawing in of air. You breathe in and you breathe out. You do it every moment. And life as a whole is the same: the entire capacity for breathing that you received at birth, you'll eventually give back to the element you first drew it from.

It's not worth much that we transpire, like plants. Or that we breathe, like animals. Or that we receive sense impressions. Or that we're jerked around by our desires like puppets on strings. Or that we herd together. Or that we eat — which is really no different from expelling the waste of what we've eaten. So what is worth valuing? Applause? No. Then don't value the applause of tongues either, because the praise of the crowd is just a clapping of tongues. So you've given up fame — that worthless thing. What's left that's worth valuing? This, I think: to move yourself and restrain yourself in accordance with your own proper nature. This is what every skill and craft aims at — that the thing it creates should be fit for the work it was made to do. The vine-grower, the horse-trainer, the dog-breeder — they all seek this. And education and teaching aim at the same thing. So here is where the real value lies. And if you get this right, you won't chase after anything else. Won't you stop valuing so many other things? Then you'll never be free, or self-sufficient, or at peace. Because you'll be forced into envy, jealousy, suspicion — always watching the people who might take those things from you, always scheming against those who have what you covet. A person who craves any of those things is bound to be in constant turmoil — and will end up finding fault with the gods besides. But revere and honor your own mind, and you'll be content with yourself, in harmony with others, and in agreement with the gods — grateful for everything they give and have arranged.

Above, below, all around — the elements move. But the motion of virtue is none of these. It's something more divine. It advances along a path barely visible, and travels happily on its way.

How strangely people act. They won't praise the people who are alive and living right beside them. But to be praised themselves by future generations — people they've never seen and never will see — that's what they set great store by. It's as absurd as being upset that people who lived before you didn't praise you.

If something is hard for you to accomplish, don't conclude it's impossible for a human being. If it's possible for any person and consistent with human nature, consider it within your reach too.

In the gymnasium, suppose someone scratches you with their nails or cracks your head with a headbutt. You don't make a scene. You're not offended. You don't suspect them of plotting against you. You are on your guard — but not as against an enemy. Not with suspicion. You just quietly keep your distance. Do something like this in the rest of life too. Overlook many things in the people who are, in a sense, your sparring partners. It's always possible, as I said, to step aside — without suspicion and without hatred.

If anyone can prove me wrong and show me that something I think or do is mistaken, I'll gladly change. I'm after the truth, and the truth never harmed anyone. What's harmful is persisting in self-deception and ignorance.

I do what I'm supposed to do. Other things don't trouble me — because they're either lifeless, or without reason, or wandering around lost.

Toward animals and things without reason, treat them generously and freely — you have reason and they don't. But toward human beings, because they share in reason, behave socially. And in all things, call on the gods. Don't worry about how long you'll be doing this. Even three hours spent this way would be enough.

Alexander of Macedon and his stable hand were brought to the same state by death. Either they were both absorbed back into the same generative principles of the universe, or they were both scattered equally among the atoms.

Consider how many things happen at the same time inside each of us — things of the body and things of the soul. Then you won't be surprised that far more — or rather, all things that come into existence in the whole universe we call the cosmos — exist within it simultaneously.

If someone asked you how to spell the name "Antoninus," would you shout out each letter in a strained voice? And if they got angry, would you get angry back? Wouldn't you just calmly go on, letter by letter? In the same way, remember that every duty in life is made up of its component steps. Your job is to observe each one, without getting flustered or lashing back at those who lash out at you. Just keep going, and finish what's in front of you.

How cruel it is to forbid people from pursuing what seems natural and beneficial to them. And yet, in a way, that's exactly what you're doing when you get frustrated that they do wrong. They're drawn to those things because they believe they're natural and useful. — But they're not. — Then teach them. Show them. Without anger.

Death is a rest from the impressions of the senses, from the pull of desires, from the wandering of thought, and from service to the body.

It's a disgrace for the soul to give up on life before the body does.

Take care that you're not made into a Caesar — that you're not dyed with that dye, because it happens. Keep yourself simple, good, pure, serious, unpretentious. A friend of justice. Reverent toward the gods. Kind. Affectionate. Vigorous in doing what's right. Strive to remain the person philosophy wanted to make you. Revere the gods and help people. Life is short. The only harvest of this earthly life is a reverent disposition and acts of service to others. In everything, be a student of Antoninus. Remember his persistence in doing what was reasonable. His steadiness in all things. His reverence. The calm of his expression. His gentleness. His indifference to empty fame. His determination to understand things thoroughly. How he never let anything pass until he had examined it carefully and understood it completely. How he bore unjust criticism without returning it. How he never rushed. How he ignored slander. How precisely he studied character and conduct. He never mocked. Never panicked. Was never suspicious. Never played the sophist. How little he needed — a simple bed, simple clothes, plain food, few servants. How hard he worked. How patient he was. His sparing diet meant he could work straight through to evening without even needing to relieve himself except at the usual hour. The constancy and reliability of his friendships. His tolerance for those who openly disagreed with him. His pleasure when someone showed him something better. How deeply religious he was — without a trace of superstition. Imitate all of this, so that when your last hour comes, your conscience will be as clear as his was.

Come back to your senses. Call yourself awake. Now that you've shaken off sleep and realized it was only dreams that troubled you, look at the things around you in your waking hours the same way you looked at those dreams.

I am a little body and a soul. To the body, everything is indifferent — it can't tell the difference. To the mind, the only things that aren't indifferent are its own activities. And of those, the only ones it truly controls are those concerned with the present. Even its past and future activities are, for the moment, indifferent.

The work of the hand is not contrary to nature, so long as the hand does the hand's work. The work of the foot is not contrary to nature, so long as the foot does the foot's work. In the same way, the work of a human being is not contrary to nature, so long as it does the work of a human being. And if the work isn't contrary to nature, it isn't an evil either.

Think of how many pleasures have been enjoyed by robbers, traitors, and tyrants.

Don't you see how skilled craftsmen will accommodate themselves to a degree to those who know nothing of their craft — and yet they never abandon the principles of their art? Isn't it strange, then, that an architect or a doctor should respect the principles of their craft more than a human being respects their own reason — which they share with the gods?

Asia and Europe are corners of the universe. The whole sea is a drop. Mount Athos, a lump of dirt. The entire present moment is a point in eternity. Everything is small, changeable, perishable. All things come from one source — from that universal governing power, either flowing directly or as a consequence. Even the lion's gaping jaws, poison, and every harmful thing — thorns, mud — are byproducts of the grand and the beautiful. Don't imagine they belong to some other order than what you revere. Instead, form a clear idea of the source of all things.

Whoever has seen the present has seen everything — everything that has happened from all eternity and everything that will happen for all time to come. All things are related, and all things are alike.

Reflect often on the interconnection of all things in the universe and how they relate to one another. In a sense, all things are woven together and therefore feel a kinship with one another. One thing follows another in sequence, through the force of active movement, the mutual sympathy of things, and the unity of all substance.

Adapt yourself to the things your lot has been cast among. And the people you've been given to share life with — love them. Truly and sincerely.

Every tool, instrument, or vessel is well if it does the work it was made for — even though the maker isn't there. But in the things held together by nature, the power that made them is within and remains within. All the more reason to revere this power and to understand that if you live and act according to its will, everything in you is in harmony with intelligence. And so too in the universe: what belongs to it is in harmony with intelligence.

If you treat things outside your control as good or evil, then whenever something bad happens to you, or you lose something you thought was good, you'll inevitably blame the gods and hate the people responsible — or those you suspect might be responsible. We commit great injustice by failing to treat these things as morally neutral. But if we judge only the things within our power to be truly good or bad, there's no longer any reason to blame god or take a hostile stance toward anyone.

We're all working toward the same end. Some of us knowingly and deliberately. Others without realizing it — the way Heraclitus, I think, says that even sleepers are workers and collaborators in the events of the universe. People cooperate in different ways. Even those who complain about what happens and try to resist it contribute — the universe needs people like them too. So the question for you is: what kind of worker will you be? The one who governs all things will certainly put you to good use. You'll be received as one of the cooperators whose labor serves the whole. Just don't be the kind of part Chrysippus talks about — the cheap, ridiculous line in the play.

Does the sun try to do the work of the rain? Does Asclepius try to do the work of the earth? And what about the stars — aren't they all different, yet working together toward the same end?

If the gods have made decisions about me and about what must happen to me, they've decided well. It's hard even to imagine a god without foresight. And why would they want to harm me? What advantage would it bring — to them or to the whole, which is the special object of their care? But even if they haven't made decisions about me individually, they've certainly made decisions about the whole. And the things that follow as a consequence of that larger arrangement, I should welcome and accept. And if they make no decisions at all — which is impious to believe, and if we did believe it, we'd have no reason to sacrifice or pray or swear by them or do any of the things we do as if the gods were present and living among us — but even so, if the gods decide nothing about our affairs, I'm still able to decide about my own. And I can ask what's useful for me. And what's useful for anyone is what accords with their own nature and constitution. My nature is rational and social. My city, insofar as I am Antoninus, is Rome. Insofar as I am a human being, it is the world. So only what benefits these communities is truly good for me. Whatever happens to each person serves the interest of the whole — that by itself should be enough. But you'll notice something more if you pay attention: what benefits any one person benefits others too. Though here, let "benefit" be understood in its ordinary sense, as applying to things that are morally neutral.

Just as in the amphitheater, where the constant repetition of the same spectacles makes the whole thing tedious — so it is with life as a whole. Everything above and below is the same, and comes from the same source. How long, then?

Think continually about all the people, of every kind and pursuit and nation, who are now dead. Follow the thought all the way down — to Philistion, Phoebus, Origanion. Now turn to the other kinds. We must all go to the same place where so many brilliant orators have gone, so many great philosophers — Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Socrates — so many heroes, so many generals, so many tyrants. And besides them: Eudoxus, Hipparchus, Archimedes — sharp minds, great thinkers, tireless workers, people of range and confidence. Even those who mocked the brevity of mortal life itself, like Menippus and his kind. Think about all of them. They've been dust for ages. And what harm has it done them? What harm to those whose names are completely forgotten? Only one thing here has real value: to live your life in truth and justice, with kindness — even toward liars and the unjust.

When you want something to lift your spirits, think about the good qualities of the people around you. The energy of one. The modesty of another. The generosity of a third. Some other fine quality in a fourth. Nothing cheers you up quite like the virtues of the people you live with, when those virtues come to life before your eyes. Keep them in front of you.

You're not upset, I assume, because you weigh only so many pounds and not three hundred. Then don't be upset that you'll live only so many years and not more. Just as you accept the amount of matter you've been given, be content with the time.

Try to persuade them. But if the principles of justice require it, act even against their will. If someone uses force to block you, shift to contentment and calm — and use the obstacle as an opportunity to practice some other virtue. Remember: your attempt was always conditional. You weren't trying to do the impossible. What were you trying to do, then? — Just this kind of effort. — And that you've achieved, even if the thing you were working toward didn't happen.

The person who loves fame thinks another person's activity is their own good. The person who loves pleasure thinks their own sensations are their good. But the person with understanding knows their own actions are their good.

It's in our power to form no judgement about a thing and so to keep our soul undisturbed. Things in themselves have no power to force our judgements.

Train yourself to listen carefully to what other people are saying. As far as you can, enter into the mind of the speaker.

What isn't good for the hive isn't good for the bee.

If the sailors cursed the helmsman, or the sick cursed the doctor, who else would they listen to? And how could the helmsman keep the ship safe, or the doctor restore health?

How many of the people I came into the world with have already left it.

To the jaundiced, honey tastes bitter. To those bitten by a rabid dog, water is terrifying. To little children, a ball is the most wonderful thing. So why am I angry? Do you think a false belief has less power than bile in the jaundiced or venom in the dog-bitten?

No one will stop you from living in accordance with your own rational nature. Nothing will happen to you contrary to the nature of the universe.

Think about the kind of people others are trying to please, and for what ends, and by what kind of actions. How quickly time will bury everything — and how much it has buried already.

Book VII

What is evil? It's what you've seen many times before. Whenever anything happens, keep this in mind: you've seen it before. Up and down, everywhere — you'll find the same things. Ancient history is full of them. Medieval history is full of them. Our own time is full of them. Every city, every household. Nothing is new. Everything is familiar, and everything is brief.

How can your principles die unless the thoughts that sustain them are snuffed out? And it's in your power to keep fanning those thoughts into flame. I can form the right judgement about anything. If I can, why am I disturbed? The things outside my mind have no bearing on my mind at all. — Let this be the condition of your soul, and you stand upright. To recover your life is in your power. Look at things the way you used to look at them. That's what it means to recover your life.

The empty spectacle of public shows. Plays on the stage. Flocks of sheep, herds of cattle. Men jabbing with spears. A bone tossed to little dogs. A crumb of bread thrown into a fishpond. The laboring of ants hauling their loads. Frightened mice scurrying about. Puppets pulled by strings — all the same. Your job, in the middle of all this, is to show good humor, not arrogance. But understand: every person is worth exactly as much as the things they spend their time on.

In conversation, pay attention to what's being said. In every action, observe what's being done. In conversation, look immediately for the purpose behind the words. In action, watch carefully for the meaning behind the movements.

Is my understanding up to this task, or not? If it is, I use it as an instrument given to me by nature. If it isn't, then either I step aside and make room for someone who can do it better — unless there's a reason I shouldn't — or I do the best I can, bringing in someone whose ability, combined with the guidance of my rational mind, can accomplish what the moment demands for the common good. Whatever I do, whether alone or with help, should be directed at one thing only: what is useful and well suited to society.

How many people, once celebrated by fame, have been handed over to oblivion. And how many who celebrated them are long since dead.

Don't be ashamed to accept help. Your job is to do your duty, like a soldier storming a wall. What if you're lame and can't scale the battlements alone — but with someone else's help, you can?

Don't let future things disturb you. You'll meet them when they come, carrying the same reason you use now for what's in front of you.

All things are woven together, and the bond is sacred. Hardly anything exists in isolation. Things have been coordinated, and they combine to form one ordered universe. There is one universe made up of all things, one God who pervades all things, one substance, one law, one common reason shared by all intelligent beings, and one truth — if indeed there is also one perfection for all creatures who share the same origin and the same reason.

Everything material soon vanishes into the substance of the whole. Every cause is soon taken back into the universal reason. The memory of everything is soon drowned in time.

For the rational creature, what accords with nature and what accords with reason are the same thing.

Stand upright — or be set upright.

Just as the limbs of a single body work together, so it is with rational beings, even though they exist as separate individuals. They were made for cooperation. This will become clearer to you if you often say to yourself: I am a member of the community of rational beings. But if you say only that you are a part — using the word loosely — you don't yet love people from the heart. Doing good doesn't yet delight you for its own sake. You're still doing it out of mere propriety, not yet as something good for yourself.

Let whatever happens fall on the parts of me that can feel it. Those parts can complain if they want. But I am not harmed — unless I judge what happened to be an evil. And it's in my power not to judge it so.

Whatever anyone does or says, I must be good. Just as if gold, or an emerald, or purple dye were always saying: Whatever anyone does or says, I must be emerald and keep my color.

Your rational mind does not disturb itself. It doesn't frighten itself or cause itself pain. If someone else can frighten or hurt it, let them try. The mind itself won't turn itself in that direction by its own judgement. Let the body look after itself, if it can, and let it speak up if it suffers. But the soul — which is what feels fear and pain, which has the full power to form judgements about these things — will suffer nothing, because it will never stray into such a judgement. Your rational mind wants nothing unless it creates the want for itself. And so it remains free from disturbance and unobstructed — as long as it doesn't disturb and obstruct itself.

Happiness is a good inner spirit — a good thing within. So what are you doing here, imagination? Go away, I beg you, the way you came. I don't need you. You've shown up out of old habit, I know. I'm not angry with you — just go away.

Is anyone afraid of change? But what can happen without it? What is more natural, more essential to the universe? Can you take a hot bath without the firewood changing? Can you eat without the food changing? Can anything useful be accomplished without change? Don't you see, then, that your own change is just the same — and equally necessary for nature?

Through the substance of the universe, as through a raging torrent, all bodies are carried along — united by nature with the whole and cooperating with it, the way the parts of our body cooperate with one another. How many a Chrysippus, how many a Socrates, how many an Epictetus has time already swallowed up? Let this same thought strike you about every person and every thing.

Only one thing troubles me: that I might do something my nature as a human being doesn't permit, or do it in the wrong way, or do it at the wrong time.

Soon you will have forgotten everything. And soon everyone will have forgotten you.

It's a distinctly human quality to love even those who do wrong. This happens when you remember that they are your kin, that they do wrong out of ignorance and without meaning to, that soon you will both be dead, and above all — that the wrongdoer has done you no real harm, because they haven't made your rational mind worse than it was before.

Nature, out of the substance of the universe, molds things like wax. Now a horse. Then she breaks it up and uses the material for a tree, then a person, then something else. Each form lasts only a short time. But it's no hardship for the vessel to be broken apart, just as there was none in its being put together.

A perpetual scowl is unnatural. When you put it on often enough, whatever beauty your face had dies away, and eventually it's so completely extinguished it can never be rekindled. Try to draw from this very fact the conclusion that it's contrary to reason. If you lose even the awareness that you're going wrong, what reason is there to keep living?

The nature that governs the whole will soon change everything you see. From their substance it will make new things, and from those new things still others — so that the world is always fresh.

When someone wrongs you, immediately consider what belief about good or evil led them to do it. Once you see that, you'll pity them. You won't be surprised, and you won't be angry. Either you yourself hold the same thing to be good as they do, or something similar — in which case you should forgive them. And if you don't share their ideas about good and evil, you'll find it even easier to feel goodwill toward someone who is simply mistaken.

Don't think so much about what you don't have. Instead, think about what you do have. Pick out the best of it, and reflect on how eagerly you would have sought these things if you didn't already have them. But at the same time, be careful not to value them so highly that you'd be upset to lose them.

Retreat into yourself. Your rational mind has this quality: when it acts justly, it is content with itself, and finds peace.

Wipe out imagination. Stop the pulling of the strings. Confine yourself to the present moment. Understand clearly what happens to you or to someone else. Divide every object into its cause and its material. Think of your last hour. Let the wrong that's done by someone stay where the wrong was done.

Focus your attention on what is being said. Let your understanding enter into the things that are being done and the causes behind them.

Adorn yourself with simplicity and humility and with indifference toward the things that are morally neutral — the things that lie between virtue and vice. Love humankind. Follow God. The poet says that law rules all things. And it's enough to remember that law rules all.

About death: Whether it's a scattering, a dissolving into atoms, or annihilation — it's either extinction or change.

About pain: Pain that is unbearable carries you off. Pain that lingers is bearable. The mind maintains its own calm by retreating into itself, and your rational mind is not made worse. The parts damaged by pain — let them speak for themselves, if they can.

About fame: Look at the minds of those who chase fame. See what they are. See what kinds of things they avoid and what kinds they pursue. And consider: just as heaps of sand piled on one another bury the sand beneath, so in life the events that come after quickly cover the ones that came before.

From Plato: "The person with an elevated mind who sees the whole of time and the whole of reality — do you think it's possible for such a person to consider human life something great?" "It's not possible," he said. "Then such a person will consider death no evil either?" "Certainly not."

From Antisthenes: "It is kingly to do good and be criticized for it." It is shameful for the face to obey and compose itself as the mind commands, while the mind itself refuses to be composed and ordered on its own.

"It isn't right to be angry at things — they don't care at all."

"To the immortal gods and us give joy."

"Life must be reaped like ripe grain: one person is born, another dies."

"If the gods don't care for me and my children, there is a reason for it."

"The good is with me, and justice."

No joining others in their wailing. No violent emotion.

From Plato: "I would answer him like this: You are wrong if you think that a person of any real worth should calculate the risk of living or dying. The only thing they should consider in everything they do is whether they are acting justly or unjustly — doing the work of a good person or a bad one."

"For this is the truth, men of Athens: wherever a person has stationed themselves, believing it the best position — or wherever they've been posted by a commander — there, in my view, they ought to remain and face the danger. They should take nothing into account — not death, not anything — before the disgrace of deserting their post."

"But consider, my friend, whether what is noble and good isn't something quite different from saving your life or having it saved. Perhaps a real person should stop thinking about how long they'll live. There should be no clinging to life. Entrust these matters to God, and believe what the women say — that no one can escape their destiny. The only question worth asking is how best to live the time you have."

Look at the stars and imagine yourself moving along with them. Constantly consider the changes of the elements into one another. These thoughts cleanse the grime of life on the ground.

This is a fine passage from Plato: Anyone who talks about human beings should also look down on earthly things as if from a great height — at their gatherings, armies, farming, marriages, treaties, births, deaths, the noise of courtrooms, empty places, the many nations of foreigners, festivals, mourning, markets. A mixture of all things, and an ordered arrangement of opposites.

Consider the past — how many great powers have risen and fallen. You can foresee the future too, because it will certainly follow the same pattern. It can't deviate from the order of things that take place now. To have observed human life for forty years is the same as observing it for ten thousand. What more will you see?

"What has grown from the earth returns to earth, but what has sprung from heavenly seed returns to the heavenly realms."

This is either a dissolving of the bonds between atoms or a similar scattering of elements that have no consciousness.

"With food and drink and cunning arts, diverting the stream to escape from death." "The wind that heaven sends we must endure, and labor without complaint."

Someone else may be a better wrestler — but they are not more community-minded, more humble, better prepared to meet whatever happens, or more forgiving of their neighbors' faults.

Wherever work can be done in accordance with the reason shared by gods and human beings, there is nothing to fear. Where you can benefit from activity that succeeds and proceeds according to your nature, no harm is to be expected.

Always and everywhere, it is in your power to accept your present condition with reverence, to treat the people around you justly, and to apply your skill to your present thoughts — so that nothing slips in without being carefully examined.

Don't look around trying to discover what principles other people live by. Look straight at where nature leads you — both the nature of the universe, through the things that happen to you, and your own nature, through the actions required of you. Every being should do what its nature calls for. Everything else exists for the sake of rational beings — the lower for the higher, among things without reason, and rational beings for one another.

The first principle of human nature is the social. The second is to resist the persuasions of the body, because it's the defining work of rational intelligence to set its own boundaries, and never to be overpowered by the impulses of the senses or the appetites — both of which are animal. Rational intelligence claims authority and refuses to be mastered by them. And rightly so — it was made by nature to govern them all. The third principle is to be free from error and deception. Let your rational mind hold fast to these things and go straight ahead. It will have what is rightly its own.

Consider yourself already dead, your life up to this point complete. Now live the remainder that's been given to you in accordance with nature.

Love only what happens to you and what is woven into the thread of your destiny. What could be more fitting?

In everything that happens, picture those who had the same things happen to them — how they were frustrated, how they treated their troubles as strange, how they complained. And where are they now? Nowhere. So why choose to act the same way? Why not leave these disturbances — which are foreign to nature — to the people who cause them and the people who are consumed by them? Why not devote yourself entirely to the right use of what happens to you? Then you'll use it well, and it will become raw material for you to work with. Just attend to yourself. Resolve to be a good person in every act you perform. And remember ...

Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will keep bubbling up if you keep digging.

The body should be composed — showing no irregularity in movement or posture. What the mind shows in the face, by maintaining an expression of intelligence and calm, should be expected of the whole body. But all of this should be natural — without affectation.

The art of life is more like wrestling than dancing. It should stand ready and firm to meet sudden, unexpected blows.

Pay constant attention to the people whose approval you're seeking, and ask what principles govern them. Once you look into the sources of their judgements and desires, you won't blame them when they give offense without meaning to — and you won't crave their approval either.

Every soul, the philosopher says, is deprived of truth against its will. The same goes for justice, self-control, kindness, and every quality of the kind. It's essential to keep this in mind constantly. It will make you gentler toward everyone.

In every pain, hold this thought: there is no shame in it, and it doesn't make your rational mind worse. Pain doesn't damage the mind in its capacity for reason or in its capacity for community. And for most pains, let this saying of Epicurus help you: pain is neither unbearable nor unending — as long as you remember it has limits and you don't add to it in your imagination. Remember this too: many things we find disagreeable are really just pain by another name — excessive drowsiness, being scorched by heat, having no appetite. When you're irritated by any of these, tell yourself: you are giving in to pain.

Be careful not to feel toward the inhumane the way they feel toward others.

How do we know Telauges wasn't a better person than Socrates? It's not enough that Socrates died a nobler death, or argued more skillfully with the Sophists, or endured the cold more patiently through the night, or showed greater courage when he was ordered to arrest Leon of Salamis and refused, or that he supposedly strutted through the streets — though it's very doubtful this was even true. What we really need to ask is: what kind of soul did Socrates have? Was he able to be satisfied with being just toward people and reverent toward the gods — not pointlessly angry at human wickedness, not enslaving himself to anyone's ignorance, not treating anything that fate dealt him as something strange, not enduring it as something unbearable, not letting his mind be dragged down by the suffering of the body?

Nature did not blend intelligence with the body so thoroughly that you can't draw boundaries around yourself and bring what belongs to you under your own authority. It's entirely possible to be a person of real depth and have no one recognize it. Always keep this in mind. And this too: very little is needed for a happy life. Just because you've given up hope of becoming a great logician or natural philosopher, don't abandon the hope of being free, humble, generous, and obedient to God.

You have the power to live in complete freedom and perfect peace of mind, even if the whole world screams at you, even if wild beasts tear apart this body — this kneaded matter that has grown around you. Nothing prevents the mind, in the middle of all that, from holding itself in calm, from judging everything around it fairly, and from making ready use of whatever is presented to it — so that judgement says to each thing that comes before it: This is what you really are, whatever people may think you are. And practical skill says to whatever falls to hand: You are exactly what I was looking for. Whatever presents itself to me is always material for the exercise of virtue — rational and social — and in a word, for the practice of the art that belongs to human beings and to God. Everything that happens is related either to God or to humankind, and is neither new nor difficult to handle — just familiar, workable material.

The perfection of character consists in this: living each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretense.

The immortal gods are not frustrated that they must endure human beings — so many of them, and for so long, and so many of them bad. More than that, they even care for them in every way. And you — who are destined to end so soon — are you already weary of enduring the bad? Especially when you're one of them yourself?

It's absurd to try to escape from other people's badness — which is impossible — instead of escaping from your own, which is entirely possible.

Whatever your rational and social mind finds to be neither intelligent nor social, it rightly judges to be beneath it.

When you've done a good deed and someone has received it, why do you go looking for a third thing on top of that — as fools do — the reputation for having done good, or a favor in return?

No one tires of receiving what is useful. And it is useful to act according to nature. So don't tire of receiving what is useful — by doing what is useful for others.

The nature of the whole set itself in motion to create this universe. Now, either everything that happens follows as a consequence of that original motion, or even the most important things — the things toward which the governing power of the universe directs itself — are governed by no rational principle at all. Remembering this will make you calmer about a great many things.

Book VIII

Here's another thought that should cure you of craving empty fame: it's no longer in your power to have lived your whole life — or at least your life from youth onward — as a philosopher. To plenty of other people, and to yourself, it's obvious that you're a long way from philosophy. You've gotten off track. So the reputation of a philosopher is no longer within reach — and your way of life works against it. If you've truly seen where the matter lies, then stop worrying about how you'll appear to others. Be content if you can live the rest of your life the way your nature wills. So look closely at what it wills, and let nothing else distract you. You've wandered enough already without finding happiness anywhere — not in logic, not in wealth, not in reputation, not in pleasure. Nowhere. So where is it? In doing what human nature requires. And how do you do that? By holding to principles that govern your impulses and actions. What principles? Those that concern good and evil: the belief that nothing is truly good for you unless it makes you just, self-controlled, brave, and free — and nothing truly bad unless it does the opposite.

With every action, ask yourself: How does this sit with me? Will I regret it? In a little while I'll be dead and all of this will be gone. What more do I need, if what I'm doing now is the work of a rational, social being — one who lives under the same law as God?

Alexander, Gaius Caesar, Pompey — what are they next to Diogenes, Heraclitus, and Socrates? Those men understood things, their causes, their substance. And their rational minds were their own. But the others? How many things they had to manage. How many things they were slaves to.

Remember: people will go on doing the same things whether you burst with frustration or not.

This is the main thing: Don't be disturbed. All things follow the nature of the universe. In a little while you'll be nobody and nowhere — just like Hadrian and Augustus. Then fix your eyes steadily on what's in front of you. Remember that your duty is to be a good person — to do what human nature demands. Do it without swerving. Speak in whatever way seems most just, but always with good intent, with humility, and without pretense.

The nature of the universe has this work to do: moving things from here to there, changing them, picking them up from one place and setting them down in another. Everything is change — but there's nothing new to fear. Everything is familiar. Only the arrangement keeps shifting.

Every nature is content with itself when things go well. A rational nature goes well when it gives no assent to what is false or uncertain, when it directs its impulses only toward the common good, when it limits its desires and aversions to what's in its own power, and when it welcomes everything assigned to it by the nature we all share. For the nature of each individual is part of the nature of the whole, the way a leaf is part of a plant — except that in the plant, the leaf belongs to a nature without perception or reason, a nature that can be blocked. But the nature of a human being is part of a nature that cannot be blocked, and that is intelligent and just — distributing to everything, in fair measure and according to its worth, time, substance, cause, activity, and circumstance. Don't look for a one-to-one equality between any single thing and any other. Instead, take all the parts of one thing together and compare them with all the parts of another.

You may not have time to read. But you do have time to check your arrogance. You have time to rise above pleasure and pain. You have time to be greater than the love of fame. You have time not to be angry at stupid and ungrateful people — and even to care for them.

Let no one ever hear you complaining about life at court — or about your own life, for that matter.

Regret is a kind of self-reproach for having missed something useful. But what is truly good must be useful, and a truly good person should pursue it. Yet no good person ever regretted turning down a sensual pleasure. Therefore pleasure is neither good nor useful.

Any given thing — what is it in itself, in its own nature? What is its substance, its material? What is its cause? What is it doing in the world? How long will it last?

When you drag yourself out of bed reluctantly, remember: acting for the common good is in keeping with your nature as a human being. Sleeping is something even animals do. What aligns with each creature's specific nature is more truly its own — more suited to it, and more satisfying.

Constantly — and if possible, with every impression that strikes your mind — apply the principles of natural philosophy, ethics, and logic.

Whenever you meet someone, immediately ask yourself: What does this person believe about good and evil? Because if they hold certain views about pleasure and pain, about fame and disgrace, about life and death, then it won't seem strange or surprising when they act accordingly. I'll keep in mind that they're compelled to act this way.

Remember: just as it would be absurd to be shocked that a fig tree produces figs, it's absurd to be shocked that the world produces what it naturally produces. A doctor shouldn't be surprised when a patient has a fever. A helmsman shouldn't be surprised when the wind blows against him.

Remember that changing your mind and following someone who sets you right is just as consistent with freedom as sticking to your position. The action is still yours — carried out by your own will, your own judgement, your own understanding.

If something is in your power, why don't you do it? If it's in someone else's power, who do you blame? Random chance? The gods? Both are foolish. Blame no one. If you can, correct the cause. If you can't do that, correct the thing itself. If you can't even do that, what's the use of finding fault? Nothing should be done without a purpose.

What has died does not fall out of the universe. If it stays here, it also changes here, dissolving into its elements — elements of the universe and of yourself. And those elements change too. And they don't complain about it.

Everything exists for a purpose — a horse, a vine. Why does this surprise you? Even the sun would say, I exist for a purpose. And the rest of the gods would say the same. So what's your purpose? Pleasure? See if common sense can accept that.

Nature has given equal care to the end of things as to their beginning and continuation — like a person throwing a ball into the air. What good is it for the ball to go up? What harm for it to come down, or to have fallen? What good is it for a bubble to hold together? What harm when it pops? The same can be said of a lamp.

Turn the body inside out and see what it really is. See what it becomes when it grows old, when it falls ill.

Short-lived is the one who praises and the one who is praised, the one who remembers and the one who is remembered. And all of this happens in one corner of one small part of the world — where not even everyone agrees with each other, where no one even agrees with themselves. And the whole earth is a point.

Give your attention to the matter before you — whether it's a judgement, an action, or a word.

You suffer this rightly: you'd rather become good tomorrow than be good today.

Am I doing something? I do it with reference to the good of humankind. Does something happen to me? I accept it and trace it back to the gods and the source of all things, from which everything flows.

Think of what bathing looks like: oil, sweat, grime, filthy water — all of it disgusting. That's what every part of life is like. That's what everything is.

Lucilla saw Verus die, and then Lucilla died. Secunda saw Maximus die, and then Secunda died. Epitynchanus saw Diotimus die, and then Epitynchanus died. Antoninus saw Faustina die, and then Antoninus died. That's how it always goes. Celer saw Hadrian die, and then Celer died. And those sharp-witted men — the seers, the ones puffed up with pride — where are they? The brilliant ones: Charax, Demetrius the Platonist, Eudaemon, and others like them. All of them short-lived, dead long ago. Some not remembered even briefly. Others turned into the heroes of legends. Others vanished even from legend. So remember: this little compound that is you must either be dissolved, or your poor breath must be extinguished, or you must be taken up and placed somewhere else.

What satisfies a person is doing what is proper to a human being. And what is proper? To be kind to your own kind. To dismiss the illusions of the senses. To judge carefully which impressions deserve trust. To contemplate the nature of the universe and everything that happens in it.

You have three relationships: one to the body that surrounds you; one to the divine cause from which all things flow into all beings; and one to the people you live with.

Pain is either an evil to the body — let the body speak for itself about that — or to the soul. But the soul has the power to maintain its own calm and not judge pain to be an evil. Every judgement, every desire, every impulse, every aversion comes from within. No evil climbs that high.

Erase your false impressions. Keep telling yourself: right now, it's in my power to let no wickedness into this soul, no craving, no disturbance of any kind. I look at all things and see them for what they are. I use each one according to its value. Remember: this power comes from nature.

Speak in the senate, and to every person, whoever they may be, in a way that fits the moment. No affectation. Use plain language.

The court of Augustus — wife, daughter, descendants, ancestors, sister, Agrippa, relatives, friends, Areius, Maecenas, physicians, priests — the whole court is dead. Then think bigger: not the death of one person, but of an entire family — like the line of Pompey. Think of the words inscribed on tombs: The last of his race. Think of the trouble those before them took to leave an heir. And yet someone had to be the last. So here again — the death of an entire line.

It's your duty to put your life in order, one act at a time. If each act does its duty as far as possible, be content. No one can stop each of your acts from fulfilling its purpose. — But something external will get in the way. — Nothing will prevent you from acting justly, with self-control, and with good judgement. — But maybe some other part of the work will be blocked. — Well then, accept the obstacle with grace. Willingly redirect your effort to what is still possible, and another opportunity immediately opens up — one that fits this way of living we're talking about.

Receive wealth or good fortune without arrogance. And be ready to let it go.

If you ever saw a hand cut off, or a foot, or a head lying somewhere apart from the body — that's what a person does to themselves, as much as they can, when they refuse to accept what happens, or cut themselves off from others, or do something against the common interest. You've torn yourself away from the natural unity. You were born a part of it, and now you've severed yourself. But here is the beautiful thing: you have the power to rejoin. God has granted no other severed part the ability to reunite with the whole. Consider the generosity in this. He has made it possible for you not to be torn away in the first place. And even when you have been, he has allowed you to come back, to grow together again, to take your place once more as a part.

Just as the nature of the universe has given every rational being its other powers, so too has it given us this one: just as universal nature turns everything that resists it and stands in its path into something useful, making it part of itself, so the rational creature can turn every obstacle into raw material and put it to use for whatever purpose it intended.

Don't overwhelm yourself by picturing the whole of your life at once. Don't try to hold in your mind all the various troubles that may fall on you. Instead, with each difficulty, ask yourself: What, specifically, is unbearable about this? You'll be ashamed to admit that there's anything. And remember: it's not the future or the past that weighs on you, only the present. And the present shrinks to almost nothing once you isolate it — and you can scold your mind if it can't endure even that small thing.

Does Panthea or Pergamus still sit by the tomb of Verus? Does Chaurias or Diotimus sit by the tomb of Hadrian? Ridiculous. And even if they did — would the dead know it? And if they knew, would it please them? And if it pleased them, would it make them immortal? Wasn't it destined that these mourners, too, would first grow old and then die? And what would the dead do after the mourners were gone? All this amounts to a foul smell and blood in a bag.

If you can see sharp, look and judge wisely — so says the philosopher.

In the makeup of a rational being, I see no virtue opposed to justice. But I do see one opposed to the love of pleasure: temperance.

If you strip away your judgement about what seems to cause you pain, you yourself stand perfectly secure. — Who is this "yourself"? — Reason. — But I'm not just reason. — Fine. Then at least let reason not trouble itself. If some other part of you is suffering, let it form its own judgement about that.

What blocks the senses is an evil to the animal nature. What blocks desire is an evil to the animal nature. And there's something that blocks and harms the nature of plants in the same way. So what blocks the intelligence is an evil to the intelligent nature. Apply all of this to yourself. Does pain or pleasure affect you? The senses will deal with that. Has some obstacle blocked your efforts? If you were pursuing the goal without reservation, then yes — that's a setback for you as a rational being. But if you take into account the usual course of things, you haven't been truly harmed or impeded. No one else can obstruct the workings of the mind. It is untouched by fire, by iron, by tyrants, by slander. When the mind has made itself a sphere, it stays a sphere.

It would be wrong for me to cause myself pain — I who have never deliberately caused pain to another.

Different things delight different people. What delights me is keeping my rational mind sound — not turning away from any person or from anything that happens to people, but looking at everything with clear eyes and welcoming it, and using each thing according to its value.

Make sure you use this present time well. The people who chase fame after death don't consider that the generations who come after will be exactly like the people they can't stand now. And those future people are mortal too. What does it matter, in the end, if they make this noise or that about you, or hold this or that opinion of you?

Take me and throw me wherever you like. I'll keep my inner spirit calm there — that is, content, so long as it can feel and act in harmony with its own nature. Is a change of place reason enough for my soul to be miserable, to become worse than it was — cringing, cowering, afraid? What could possibly be sufficient reason for that?

Nothing can happen to any person that isn't a human experience. Nothing happens to an ox that isn't natural for an ox, or to a vine that isn't natural for a vine, or to a stone that isn't proper to a stone. If what happens to each thing is usual and natural, why complain? The common nature brings you nothing you can't bear.

If something external is causing you pain, it's not the thing itself that disturbs you — it's your own judgement about it. And you have the power to erase that judgement right now. But if the pain comes from something in your own character, who's stopping you from correcting your view? And if you're frustrated because you're not doing something you think is right, then why not act instead of complaining? — But there's an insurmountable obstacle. — Then don't grieve. The reason it can't be done doesn't depend on you. — But life isn't worth living if it can't be done. — Then leave life calmly, the way a person dies who is still fully engaged in action — and who is at peace, too, with the obstacles in their path.

Remember: your rational mind is invincible when it gathers itself together and rests content in its own power, refusing to do anything it doesn't choose to do — even if it resists out of sheer stubbornness. How much stronger, then, when it forms its judgements with the aid of reason and deliberation? A mind free from passions is a citadel. A person has no stronger fortress to retreat to — and once inside, they are impregnable. Anyone who hasn't seen this is ignorant. Anyone who has seen it and doesn't take refuge there is miserable.

Say nothing more to yourself than what your first impressions report. You've been told that someone is speaking ill of you. That's what you've been told. You have not been told that you were harmed. I see that my child is sick. I see that. But I don't see that he's in danger. Stay with the first impressions like this, and add nothing from within — and nothing happens to you. Or rather, do add something: add the perspective of someone who understands how the world works.

A cucumber is bitter. Throw it away. There are thorns in the road. Step around them. That's enough. Don't add: And why do such things exist in the world? A student of nature would laugh at you — just as a carpenter or cobbler would if you complained about the sawdust and scraps in their workshop. At least they have a place to throw their waste. But nature has no outside. And the marvelous thing about her craft is this: having enclosed herself within her own boundaries, she transforms everything inside her that seems to be decaying, growing old, and becoming useless — she turns it back into herself and makes new things from these very materials. She needs no outside substance. She needs no place to dump her waste. Her own space, her own matter, her own art — these are enough.

Don't be sluggish in your actions. Don't be disorganized in your conversation. Don't let your thoughts wander aimlessly. Don't let your soul be torn between inner conflict and outward frenzy. And don't be so busy in life that you have no time for stillness.

Suppose they kill you, cut you to pieces, curse you. What can any of that do to prevent your mind from remaining pure, wise, clear-headed, just? Imagine a person standing beside a clear, pure spring and cursing it. The spring goes on sending up clean water. Throw mud in it, throw filth — the spring quickly washes it all away and is not polluted. How can you have a spring like this and not just a stagnant well? By training yourself, hour by hour, in freedom joined with contentment, simplicity, and humility.

A person who doesn't know what the world is doesn't know where they are. A person who doesn't know the world's purpose doesn't know who they are or what the world is. And anyone who falls short in any one of these things couldn't even say what their own purpose is. So what do you make of the person who chases — or runs from — the applause of the crowd, when that crowd has no idea where or who they are?

Do you want to be praised by someone who curses himself three times an hour? Do you want to please someone who can't please himself? Can a person please himself when he regrets nearly everything he does?

Let your breathing no longer be the only thing in harmony with the air around you. Let your intelligence, too, be in harmony with the intelligence that embraces all things. For the power of mind is spread everywhere and pervades everything for the person who is willing to draw it in — just as the air is there for the person who is able to breathe.

In general, wickedness does no harm to the universe. And in particular, the wickedness of one person does no harm to another. It is harmful only to the person who has the power to be free of it — whenever they choose.

My neighbor's free will is as irrelevant to my own free will as their breath and their flesh. However much we were made for each other, the rational mind in each of us has its own domain. Otherwise, my neighbor's wickedness could become my harm — and God did not will that, so that my happiness wouldn't depend on someone else.

The sun appears to pour itself down, spreading in every direction — yet it is not poured out. Its spreading is an extension. That's why its beams are called "extensions" — because they extend outward. You can see what a ray is like by watching sunlight pass through a narrow opening into a dark room. It stretches forward in a straight line, and when it hits a solid body that blocks the air beyond, the light stops there. It holds. It doesn't slide off or fall away. That's how the outpouring of your understanding should be: an extension, not an effusion. It shouldn't crash violently against the obstacles in its path, and it shouldn't collapse. It should hold its ground and illuminate whatever receives it. Anything that refuses to let the light in deprives only itself.

Whoever fears death fears either the loss of all sensation or a different kind of sensation. But if you lose sensation, you won't feel any suffering. And if you gain a different kind of sensation, you'll be a different kind of living being — and you won't have ceased to live.

People exist for the sake of one another. Teach them, or bear with them.

An arrow moves one way. The mind moves another. But the mind — even when it's being cautious, even when it's circling around a problem — still moves forward, straight toward its object.

Enter into every person's rational mind. And let every person enter into yours.

Book IX

Anyone who acts unjustly acts against the sacred order. The universe made rational beings for one another — to help each other as they deserve, never to harm. Whoever violates this principle commits an offense against the highest divinity. And so does the liar. The nature of the universe is the nature of everything that exists, and everything that exists is bound to everything that comes into being. This universal nature is called truth, and is the original cause of all that is true. So the deliberate liar sins against the sacred because he deceives. And the unintentional liar sins too, because he's out of step with the nature of things — he disrupts the order by fighting against the way the world is. He fights against it whenever he drifts toward what is false, because nature gave him the capacity to tell falsehood from truth, and he neglected it until he lost the ability.

And the person who chases pleasure as though it were good, and runs from pain as though it were evil — that person also offends the natural order. Someone like that will inevitably find fault with the universe, complaining that it distributes things unfairly — because the bad so often enjoy pleasure and the things that bring it, while the good get pain and the things that cause it. And more: whoever fears pain will also sometimes fear things that are simply going to happen in the world — and that too is an offense. And whoever pursues pleasure will not hold back from injustice — which is plainly an offense.

Now, the things toward which the universe is impartial — and it would not have made both pain and pleasure unless it were impartial toward them — anyone who wants to follow nature should share that impartiality. So with respect to pain and pleasure, death and life, honor and disgrace — things that the universe applies equally — whoever is not equally open to them is clearly acting against nature. When I say the universe applies them equally, I mean they happen alike to all who come into being in the continuous succession of things, following from that original movement of providence, when from a certain starting point it set this whole order in motion — conceiving the principles of what was to be, and establishing the powers that would generate beings, changes, and all such unfolding sequences.

The happiest departure from life would be to leave without ever having tasted lying, hypocrisy, luxury, or vanity. But the next best thing is to have had your fill of these and choose to die then — a second-best voyage, as the saying goes. Have you decided to settle down with vice? Hasn't experience taught you to flee this plague? Because the corruption of the mind is a plague — far worse, in fact, than any infection of the air around us. One is a plague for animals as animals. The other is a plague for human beings as human beings.

Don't look down on death. Welcome it. It too is one of the things nature wills. Growing young, growing old, reaching your prime, getting teeth, growing a beard, going gray, conceiving children, carrying them, giving birth — and all the other natural events your seasons bring: dissolution is just another one of these. So it's in keeping with a reflective person not to be dismissive or impatient or contemptuous toward death, but to wait for it as one of nature's operations. The way you wait for the baby to come out of your wife's womb — wait the same way for the moment when your soul slips free of this shell.

But if you want a simpler kind of comfort, something that reaches your heart: just look at the things you're about to leave behind, and the kind of people your soul will no longer be tangled up with. You shouldn't be angry at them — it's your duty to care for them and bear with them gently. But remember: when you die, you won't be leaving people who share your principles. That's the only thing that could pull you back toward life, if anything could — the chance to live among people who think the way you do. But look how much exhaustion comes from the discord of those you live with. It's enough to make you say: Come quickly, death — before I lose myself, too.

Anyone who does wrong does wrong to himself. Anyone who acts unjustly makes himself bad — and that's who gets hurt.

You can act unjustly by doing nothing, not only by doing something.

Your present judgement grounded in understanding, your present conduct directed toward the common good, your present willingness to accept whatever happens — that is enough.

Wipe out fantasy. Curb desire. Extinguish appetite. Keep your rational mind in its own power.

Among animals without reason, one life force is shared. Among rational beings, one intelligent soul is shared. Just as there is one earth for all things made of earth, and we see by one light and breathe one air — all of us who can see and all who are alive.

Everything that shares in something common is drawn toward what is like itself. Everything earthy sinks toward earth. Everything liquid flows together. Everything airy does the same — so much that they need barriers to keep them apart and force to hold them separate. Fire rises upward because of the elemental fire, and it's so eager to join with all the fire here below that any substance dry enough catches flame easily, because there's less in it to resist ignition.

In the same way, everything that shares in the common intelligent nature moves toward its own kind — or even more powerfully. The more something surpasses other things, the more ready it is to merge and fuse with what is kindred. So even among animals without reason, you find swarms of bees, herds of cattle, birds raising their young, and something like love — because even in animals there are souls, and the bonding instinct shows itself more strongly in higher creatures than it ever does in plants, stones, or trees. But in rational beings there are communities and friendships, families and assemblies. In wars there are treaties and truces. And in things higher still — even though they are separated from one another — a kind of unity exists, as among the stars. The ascent to higher levels of being can produce sympathy even across vast distances.

Look at what's happening now. Only intelligent creatures have forgotten this mutual attraction, this desire to flow together. Only among them is this convergence no longer visible. And yet, though people try to resist this union, they are caught and held by it — their nature is too strong. Watch, and you'll see what I mean. You'll sooner find something earthy that touches nothing earthy than a human being entirely cut off from other human beings.

Both a human being and God and the universe bear fruit — each in its proper season. Common usage applies the word mainly to vines and things like that, but that's just convention. Reason bears fruit too — for the whole and for itself — and from it come other things of the same kind.

If you can, correct those who do wrong by teaching them. If you can't, remember that patience was given to you for exactly this. The gods, too, are patient with such people — and they even help them get things like health, wealth, and reputation. That's how generous they are. And you can do the same. Or tell me — who's stopping you?

Don't work as if you're miserable. Don't work as if you want to be pitied or admired. Direct your will toward one thing only: to move forward and hold back as your social nature requires.

Today I got myself out of every kind of trouble. Or rather, I threw out every kind of trouble — because it wasn't outside me. It was inside, in my judgements.

All things are the same: familiar from experience, fleeting in time, worthless in substance. Everything now is just as it was in the age of those we've buried.

Things stand outside us, in themselves, by themselves. They don't know anything about themselves. They make no judgements. What, then, makes judgements about them? Your rational mind.

The good and evil of a rational, social being lie not in what it experiences but in what it does — just as its virtue and vice lie not in what happens to it but in how it acts.

A stone thrown upward: coming back down is no evil. Going up was no good.

Look into people's minds and see what kind of judges you're afraid of — and what kind of judges they are of themselves.

All things are changing. You yourself are in constant transformation, and in a way, constant dissolution. So is the whole universe.

It's your job to leave another person's wrongful act right where it happened.

The end of an activity, the stopping of an impulse, the dying out of a judgement — these are a kind of death. But is that anything to fear? Think about the stages of your life: childhood, youth, adulthood, old age. Each transition was a death of sorts. Was that frightening? Now think about your life under your grandfather. Then under your mother. Then under your father. And as you find many other changes, endings, and transformations, ask yourself: Was any of that frightening? Then neither is the ending and transformation of your whole life.

Hurry to examine your own rational mind, and that of the universe, and that of your neighbor. Your own — so you can make it just. The universe's — so you remember what you're part of. Your neighbor's — so you can know whether their error was from ignorance or intention, and so you can recognize that their rational mind is kin to yours.

Just as you are a component part of a social system, let every one of your actions be a component part of social life. Any act that has no reference — direct or indirect — to the common good tears your life apart and won't let it be whole. It's a kind of rebellion, like a man in an assembly who breaks away from the general agreement to act on his own.

Children's quarrels, their little games. Feeble spirits carrying around dead bodies. One glance at the underworld in a play and the picture becomes all too vivid.

Look at the form of a thing. Separate it from its material. Then consider: how long can a thing of this particular kind naturally last?

You've suffered endlessly because you weren't satisfied with your rational mind when it was doing exactly what it was made to do. Enough of that.

When someone blames you, hates you, or says hurtful things about you — go to their souls, get inside them, look at what kind of people they are. You'll see there's no reason to trouble yourself over what they think of you. But you should still wish them well. By nature, they're your people. And the gods help them too, in all sorts of ways — through dreams, through signs — toward the things they value.

The cycles of the universe repeat the same patterns, up and down, age after age. Either the universal intelligence initiates each individual event — and if so, accept whatever results from its action — or it set things in motion once, and everything else follows as a consequence. Or indivisible atoms are the origin of all things. In short: if there is a god, all is well. If chance rules, don't let it rule you too.

Soon the earth will cover us all. Then the earth itself will change. And the things that result from that change will go on changing forever, and those again forever. If you think about these waves of change and transformation, one after another, and how fast they come, you'll feel contempt for everything that can perish.

The universal cause is like a winter flood — it sweeps everything along. How petty are all these people wrapped up in politics, imagining themselves philosophers. All of them talkers. So — what now? Do what nature demands of you. Get moving, if it's in your power, and don't look around to see if anyone is watching. And don't expect Plato's Republic. Be satisfied if the smallest thing goes well, and don't treat that small gain as a small matter. Who can change people's beliefs? And without a change of beliefs, what do you have but slaves who groan while going through the motions of obedience? Go ahead — tell me about Alexander, Philip, Demetrius of Phalerum. Whether they truly understood what the common nature required and trained themselves accordingly — that's for them to answer. But if they were just playing the part of tragic heroes, no one has sentenced me to imitate them. The work of philosophy is simple and modest. Don't drag me off into pompousness and pride.

Look down from above at the countless crowds, the countless rituals, the endless voyages through storm and calm, the variety among those who are born, who live together, who die. Think of the lives lived long ago, the lives that will be lived after you, the lives being lived right now in distant lands. How many people don't even know your name. How many will forget it soon. How many who praise you now will blame you before long. Posthumous fame is worthless. So is reputation. So is everything else of that kind.

Let there be calm in the face of whatever comes from outside. And let there be justice in whatever comes from within — that is, let your intentions and actions come to rest in this: acting for the common good. That is what your nature demands.

You can clear away many of the things that trouble you, because they exist entirely in your judgement. You'll give yourself all the room in the world by taking in the whole universe with your mind, contemplating the eternity of time, observing how quickly each thing changes — how short the span from birth to dissolution, how immeasurable the time before birth and equally immeasurable the time after dissolution.

Everything you see will perish quickly. And those who watch it perish will perish soon after. The person who dies at the oldest possible age ends up in the same place as the one who died young.

What are these people's guiding principles? What do they busy themselves with? What do they love and admire, and why? Picture their souls stripped bare. And when they think their blame can hurt you, or their praise can help — what a notion.

Loss is nothing but change. And the universe delights in change. In obedience to her, all things are done well — have been done well from eternity and will be done well forever. So what are you saying? That everything has always been bad and always will be? That among so many gods, not one has the power to set things right, and the world is condemned to evil without end?

The rottenness at the foundation of everything! Water, dust, bones, filth. Or consider: marble is just calluses of the earth. Gold and silver, just sediments. Clothes are bits of hair. Purple dye is blood. And everything else is the same. Even breath — just another substance, constantly changing from one thing into another.

Enough of this miserable life, this grumbling, this acting like a monkey. Why are you agitated? What's new here? What is it that unsettles you? The form of the thing? Look at it. The substance? Look at that. Beyond these, there's nothing. But toward the gods — now, at last, try to be simpler and better. It makes no difference whether you examine these things for a hundred years or three.

If anyone has done wrong, the harm is his own. But maybe he hasn't done wrong.

Either all things come from one intelligent source and fit together like one body — in which case the part should not complain about what serves the whole — or there are only atoms, nothing but mixing and scattering. So why are you disturbed? Say to your rational mind: Are you dead? Have you decayed? Are you pretending? Have you turned into an animal, grazing and feeding with the herd?

Either the gods have no power, or they have power. If they have no power, why pray to them? But if they do have power, why not pray for the ability to be free from fear, free from craving, free from grief — rather than praying that this or that thing should or shouldn't happen? Because surely, if they can help people at all, they can help with this. But maybe you'll say: the gods have put these things in my power already. Well then, isn't it better to use what's in your power with the freedom of a free person, rather than grasping slavishly at what isn't? And who told you the gods don't help us even with the things that are in our power? Start praying for that kind of help and see what happens.

One person prays: Let me sleep with that woman. You pray: Let me stop wanting to sleep with her. Another prays: Let me be rid of this burden. You pray: Let me stop needing to be rid of it. Another: Don't let me lose my child. You: Let me not be afraid of losing him. Turn your prayers in this direction and watch what comes.

Epicurus says: During my illness, I didn't talk about my bodily symptoms. I didn't bore my visitors with that kind of conversation. I went on discussing the nature of things, as before, focusing on this key point — how the mind, even while sharing in the disturbances of the body, can remain free from agitation and hold on to its own good. And I didn't give the doctors a chance to put on their grave faces, as if they were doing something important. My life went on well and happily.

Do the same — in sickness, if you're sick, and in every other circumstance. Never abandon philosophy, no matter what happens to you, and don't get caught up in idle chatter with people who know nothing of nature. Focus only on what you're doing right now and on the instrument by which you do it. This is a principle shared by every school of philosophy.

When you're offended by someone's shameless behavior, immediately ask yourself: Is it possible for there to be no shameless people in the world? It's not possible. Then don't demand the impossible. This person is one of those shameless people who must necessarily exist. Keep the same thought in mind for the cheat, the traitor, and every kind of wrongdoer. The moment you remind yourself that this type of person cannot not exist, you'll feel more kindly toward each individual. It also helps, whenever the occasion arises, to recognize what virtue nature has given you to meet each kind of wrongdoing. As a remedy for the fool, she gave you gentleness. For another kind of person, some other strength.

And in every case, it's open to you to teach the person who has gone astray. Because everyone who does wrong has missed the mark — they've gone off course. Besides, how have you actually been harmed? You'll find that none of the people you're angry at has done anything that could make your mind worse. And what is truly harmful and evil for you has its foundation only in the mind.

What's the harm — what's the surprise — if an untrained person does the things an untrained person does? Think about whether you should blame yourself instead, for not expecting this person to make exactly this kind of mistake. Your reason gave you the means to see that they would likely err this way. And yet you forgot, and now you're shocked.

Above all, when you blame someone for being untrustworthy or ungrateful, turn the examination on yourself. The fault is clearly your own — either because you trusted someone whose character should have told you they wouldn't keep their word, or because when you did them a kindness, you didn't do it unconditionally. You didn't do it in a way that let the act itself be its own complete reward. What more do you want after doing someone a service? Isn't it enough that you've done something in harmony with your nature? Do you need to be paid for it? That's like the eye demanding compensation for seeing, or the feet for walking. These organs were made for a specific purpose, and by doing their natural work, they get what is properly theirs. In the same way, a human being is made for acts of generosity. When you've done something generous — or anything else that serves the common good — you've acted in accordance with your nature. You've already received what is yours.

Book X

Will you ever, my soul, be good and simple and whole and naked — more transparent than the body that surrounds you? Will you ever know the sweetness of a loving, contented nature? Will you ever be full, wanting nothing, craving nothing — no living thing, no object — for the sake of pleasure? Not wishing for more time to enjoy it, or a better place, or a milder climate, or more agreeable company? Will you just be satisfied with how things are, pleased with everything around you, convinced that you have all you need and that it comes from the gods — that whatever pleases them is well, and whatever they give to sustain this perfect living being, this good and just and beautiful whole that generates and holds together all things, that contains and embraces everything that dissolves so that new things like it may come into being? Will you ever be the kind of soul that lives in community with gods and men, finding no fault with them and earning no blame from them?

Observe what your nature requires, insofar as you are governed by nature alone. Then do it and accept it — as long as your nature as a living being won't be made worse by it.

Next, observe what your nature requires insofar as you are a living being. Allow yourself all of that too — as long as your nature as a rational being won't be made worse by it. And a rational being is, by that very fact, a social being. Follow these rules, and don't trouble yourself with anything else.

Everything that happens either happens in a way you're formed by nature to bear, or in a way you're not. If it's something you can bear, don't complain — bear it, just as nature formed you to. If it's something you can't bear, don't complain either — it will destroy itself after it destroys you. But remember: you are formed by nature to bear everything that your own judgement can make endurable and tolerable, simply by deciding it's in your interest or your duty to endure it.

If someone is mistaken, set them right kindly and show them their error. If you can't manage that, blame yourself. Or don't even blame yourself.

Whatever happens to you was prepared for you from all eternity. The weave of causes has been spinning the thread of your existence, and everything bound up with it, since time began.

Whether the universe is a swirl of atoms or nature is an ordered system, let this much be established: I am a part of the whole that is governed by nature. And I am intimately connected to the other parts that are of the same kind as myself. Remembering that I am a part, I won't be resentful of anything assigned to me by the whole — because nothing harms the part if it serves the advantage of the whole. The whole contains nothing that isn't for its own advantage. All natures share this principle, but the nature of the universe has this further quality: no external force can compel it to generate anything harmful to itself. So by remembering that I am a part of such a whole, I'll be content with everything that happens. And since I am intimately connected to my kindred parts, I'll do nothing antisocial. I'll direct my efforts toward what benefits my kind, and turn them away from the opposite. If all this is done, life flows happily — just as you'd observe that a citizen's life goes well when he pursues what benefits his fellow citizens and welcomes whatever the state assigns to him.

The parts of the whole — everything contained in the universe — must necessarily perish. But understand "perish" to mean "change." Now, if change were both naturally evil and naturally necessary for the parts, the whole could not continue in good condition, with its parts subject to change and built to break down in various ways. Did nature deliberately set out to harm her own parts, to subject them to evil and make them fall into it by necessity? Or did these results happen without her knowledge? Neither is credible. And even if you drop the word "nature" as an active power and just call these things natural processes, it would still be absurd to say that the parts of the whole are naturally subject to change and at the same time to be surprised or annoyed when change happens — as if something were happening contrary to nature. Especially since the dissolution of things is only a return to the elements from which they were composed. There's either a scattering of elements that were combined, or a change from solid to earth, from breath to air — all taken back into the universal reason, whether it is periodically consumed by fire or renewed through eternal cycles.

And don't imagine that the solid and airy parts of you have belonged to you since birth. All of it was accumulated just yesterday and the day before, so to speak, from the food you ate and the air you breathed. What changes is what you took in, not what your mother gave birth to. But even if what your mother gave birth to binds you closely to that ever-changing material part, that's no real objection to what I'm saying.

When you've taken on these names — good, modest, truthful, rational, even-tempered, high-minded — take care not to lose them. And if you do lose them, get back to them quickly. Remember what each one means: "Rational" means careful, discriminating attention to each thing, free from carelessness. "Even-tempered" means the willing acceptance of whatever the common nature assigns to you. "High-minded" means the elevation of your intelligent part above the pleasant or painful sensations of the flesh — above that trivial thing called fame, above death, and everything like it.

If you can hold on to these names — not caring whether others call you by them, but actually living them — you'll become a different person. You'll enter a different life. Because to go on as you've been, torn apart and degraded in a life like this, is the mark of a fool who clings too hard to living — like those half-eaten fighters in the arena, covered in wounds and blood, who still beg to be kept until the next day, only to be thrown to the same claws and fangs.

So anchor yourself in these few names. If you can hold your ground there, stay — as if you'd been carried off to the Islands of the Blessed. But if you feel yourself slipping, if you can't keep your grip, then go with courage into some quiet corner where you can hold them. Or even leave life altogether — not in anger, but simply, freely, modestly. You will have done at least this one admirable thing: to have left life like that.

But to help you remember these names, it will help greatly to remember the gods. They don't want flattery. They want all rational beings to become like them. And remember: what does the work of a fig tree is a fig tree. What does the work of a dog is a dog. What does the work of a bee is a bee. And what does the work of a human being is a human being.

The stage, war, alarm, dullness, servitude — these will wipe out your sacred principles day by day. How many things do you picture without studying nature, and how many do you neglect? Your duty is to look at everything and do everything in such a way that the power to deal with circumstances is developed, the contemplative faculty is exercised, and the quiet confidence that comes from understanding each thing is maintained — not flaunted, but not hidden either. When will you enjoy simplicity? When gravity? When the knowledge of what each thing really is — its substance, its place in the universe, how long it's meant to last, what it's made of, who can possess it, who can give it and take it away?

A spider is proud when it catches a fly. A man is proud when he catches a hare, or a little fish in a net, or wild boars, or bears, or Sarmatians. If you examine what they really believe, aren't they all just robbers?

Train yourself to see how all things change into one another. Keep this practice up constantly. Nothing builds greatness of mind like this. A person who does this has let go of the body. Seeing that at any moment — who knows how soon — they must leave this world and everything in it, they give themselves entirely to acting justly in all they do. As for everything else that happens, they surrender to the nature of the universe. What anyone might say or think about them, or do against them — they never give it a thought. They're satisfied with just two things: acting justly in whatever they do right now, and welcoming whatever is assigned to them right now. They've set aside every distraction and every busyness, and want nothing except to walk the straight path through the law and, by walking that straight path, to follow God.

What need is there for anxious suspicion, when it's in your power to find out what needs to be done? If you can see the way clearly, follow it — calmly, without turning back. If you can't see clearly, stop and get the best advice. If other obstacles arise, proceed as best you can, with due care, holding to what seems just. That's the best goal to aim for — and even if you fall short, let your failure come from trying. The person who follows reason in all things is calm and active at the same time, cheerful and steady.

Ask yourself the moment you wake up: Does it really matter to you whether someone else does what is just and right? It doesn't.

You haven't forgotten, I'm sure, that the people who put on grand airs when dispensing their praise or blame — you know what they're like at the table and in bed. You know what they do, what they chase, what they avoid, how they steal and plunder — not with hands and feet, but with the most precious part of themselves, the part that could, if they chose, produce trust, modesty, truth, justice, and a good inner self.

To nature, who gives all things and takes them back, the person who has learned and is humble says: Give what you will. Take back what you will. And they say this not with pride, but with obedience and genuine contentment.

What little time remains to you — it is short. Live as on a mountain. It makes no difference whether you live there or here, if wherever you are you live as a citizen of the world. Let people see, let them know, a real human being who lives in harmony with nature. If they can't endure it, let them kill you. Better that than to live the way they do.

Stop talking about what a good person should be. Be one.

Contemplate the whole of time and the whole of substance, constantly. Consider that every individual thing, in substance, is a fig seed — and in time, the turn of a drill bit.

Look at everything that exists. See that it's already dissolving and changing — already in decay and dispersal. Everything is built by nature to die.

Think about what people are like when they're eating, sleeping, having sex, using the toilet. Then think about what they're like when they act high and mighty, when they rage and scold from their lofty positions. Just a moment ago, how many people were they enslaved to, and for what petty things. And in a little while, think about the condition they'll be in.

What the nature of the universe brings to each thing is for that thing's good. And it is for its good at the very time nature brings it.

"The earth loves the shower," and "the solemn sky loves" — and the universe loves to make whatever is about to be. I say to the universe: I love as you love. Isn't this also what the saying means — that such and such "loves to happen"?

Either you're living here and have already gotten used to it, or you're leaving and it was your choice, or you're dying and your service is complete. There's nothing else. So take heart.

Let this always be clear to you: this place is like any other. Everything here is the same as on a mountaintop, or by the sea, or wherever you please. You'll find exactly what Plato describes: living within the walls of a city as though in a shepherd's fold on a mountain.

What is my rational mind to me right now? What am I making of it? What am I using it for? Is it empty of understanding? Has it broken free from social connection and gone off on its own? Is it so fused and blended with this poor flesh that it moves as one with it?

A runaway slave flees from his master. But the law is your master — and whoever breaks the law is a runaway. In the same way, anyone who is grieved or angry or afraid is rejecting something that has been, or is, or will be — appointed by the one who governs all things. And that one is law, assigning to each person what is fitting. So whoever fears, or grieves, or rages — that person is a runaway.

A man deposits seed in a womb and goes away. Then another cause takes it up, works on it, and makes a child. What a thing, from such material! Then the child takes food down through the throat, and another cause takes it and produces sensation, movement, and finally life and strength and so many other things — how numerous and how strange. Observe the things that are produced in such hidden ways. See the power at work, just as we see the power that carries things downward and upward — not with the eyes, but no less clearly.

Consider constantly that everything as it is now, so it was in the past. And it will be the same again. Place before your eyes entire dramas, entire scenes of the same kind — everything you know from your own experience or from earlier history. The whole court of Hadrian. The whole court of Antoninus. The whole court of Philip, Alexander, Croesus. All of them were dramas just like what we see now — only with different actors.

Picture every person who is distressed or discontented as being like a pig at the sacrifice, kicking and squealing.

Like that pig, too, is the person who lies in bed in silence, mourning the chains we're all held in. And consider: only a rational being has the ability to follow what happens willingly. Simply to follow is a necessity imposed on all.

With each thing you do, stop and ask yourself: Is death a terrible thing because it would deprive me of this?

When someone else's fault offends you, turn to yourself immediately and consider how you make similar mistakes — for instance, in thinking that money is a good thing, or pleasure, or a bit of reputation. By focusing on this, you'll quickly forget your anger. Especially if you add this thought: the person was compelled. What else could they have done? Or, if you're able, take away the compulsion.

When you see Satyron the Socratic philosopher, think of Eutyches or Hymen. When you see Euphrates, think of Eutychion or Silvanus. When you see Alciphron, think of Tropaeophorus. When you see Xenophon, think of Crito or Severus. And when you look at yourself, think of any other Caesar. Do this with everyone.

Then let this thought settle in: Where are those people now? Nowhere — or nobody knows where. This is how you'll come to see all human affairs as smoke and nothing. Especially if you reflect that what has once changed will never exist again in the infinite stretch of time. And you — in what a brief space your existence runs. Why aren't you content to pass through this short time in an orderly way? What raw material, what opportunity are you avoiding? What are all these experiences, if not exercises for your reason — once it has carefully examined the nature of the things that happen in life? So persevere, until you've made these things your own. The way a strong stomach digests whatever is put into it. The way a blazing fire turns everything thrown in into flame and light.

Let no one be able to say truthfully that you are not simple, or not good. Let anyone who thinks such things about you be a liar. And this is entirely in your power. Who can stop you from being good and simple? Just resolve to stop living if you can't be these things. And reason itself wouldn't ask you to go on, if you're not.

In any situation that life presents, what can be done or said in the way most in keeping with reason? Whatever it is, it's in your power to do or say it. Don't make excuses that something is in the way.

You won't stop complaining until your mind reaches a condition where doing what is in keeping with human nature feels the way luxury feels to those who chase pleasure. A person should regard as a delight everything they have the power to do according to their own nature. And that power is available everywhere.

A cylinder can't move freely wherever it pleases by its own motion. Neither can water, fire, or anything else governed by nature or by an irrational soul — the things that check them and block them are many. But intelligence and reason can pass through every obstacle, moving as they were made by nature to move and as they choose. Set this ease before your eyes — the way reason cuts through all things the way fire moves upward, a stone falls downward, a cylinder rolls down a slope. Look for nothing further.

All other obstacles either affect the body only, which is a dead thing, or — apart from your own judgement and the surrender of your reason — they can't crush you or do any real harm. If they could, the person who experienced them would immediately become bad. In every other kind of thing, when something harmful happens to it, the thing affected becomes worse. But in this case, a person actually becomes better — more worthy of praise, you might say — by making right use of what befalls them.

And remember, finally: nothing harms a true citizen that doesn't harm the state. And nothing harms the state that doesn't harm the law. None of the things we call misfortunes harms the law. So what doesn't harm the law doesn't harm the state or the citizen.

For someone who has truly absorbed sound principles, even the briefest reminder is enough to dispel grief and fear. For example:

Leaves — some the wind scatters to the ground.
So is the race of men.

Your children, too, are leaves. Leaves also are those who shout their praise as though it matters — or who curse, or who blame and sneer in secret. Leaves, too, are those who will carry your reputation to future generations. All these things "spring up in the season of spring," as the poet says. Then the wind throws them down. Then the forest grows new ones in their place. A brief existence is common to them all. And yet you chase and avoid things as if they would last forever. A little more time, and you'll close your eyes. And the one who carries you to your grave — someone else will mourn for him soon enough.

The healthy eye should be ready to see everything there is to see, not say, "I only want green things." That's the condition of a diseased eye. The healthy ear and nose should be ready for whatever can be heard and smelled. The healthy stomach should handle all food the way a mill handles everything it's built to grind. And so the healthy mind should be prepared for everything that happens. The mind that says, "Let my children live" and "Let everyone praise what I do" is an eye that craves only green, or teeth that want only soft food.

No one is so fortunate that when they die, there won't be someone standing nearby who is pleased it's happening. Say the dying person was good and wise. Even then, someone will think privately: Well, at last we can breathe freely — we're rid of this schoolmaster. It's true, he was never harsh with any of us, but I could feel him silently judging us. That's what they'll say about a good man. And in our own case, how many other reasons are there for people to wish us gone?

Think about this when you're dying, and you'll depart more peacefully by reflecting: I'm leaving a life in which even my companions — the people I fought for, prayed for, cared about — even they wish me gone, hoping perhaps to gain some small advantage from it. So why would anyone cling to a longer stay?

But don't leave with any less goodwill toward them. Keep your own character: be friendly, generous, gentle. And don't leave as if you're being torn away. When a person dies peacefully, the soul separates easily from the body. Let your departure from these people be like that. Nature joined you to them and bound you together. Now she dissolves the bond. I part from them as from family — not dragged away resisting, but freely. This, too, is one of the things according to nature.

Make it your habit, whenever anyone does anything, to ask yourself: What is this person really after? But start with yourself. Examine yourself first.

Remember: what pulls the strings is the thing hidden inside you. That is the power of persuasion. That is life. That, if you like, is what a human being really is. When you think about yourself, never include the container that surrounds you or the organs attached to it. They're like a carpenter's axe — the only difference being that they grow onto the body. Without the cause that moves and stops them, these parts are no more useful than a weaver's shuttle without a weaver, a pen without a writer, a whip without a driver.

Book XI

These are the properties of the rational soul: it sees itself, it examines itself, it makes itself whatever it chooses. The fruit it bears, it enjoys for itself -- unlike plants and animals, whose fruit belongs to others. It reaches its own fulfillment wherever the limit of life is set. Not like a dance or a play, where the whole performance is ruined if something cuts it short. No -- in every part, wherever it's stopped, the rational soul makes what it's been given complete. It can say: I have what is mine.

And more: it ranges across the whole universe, out into the surrounding void. It surveys the shape of things. It stretches into the infinity of time. It grasps and comprehends the periodic renewal of all things. It understands that those who come after us will see nothing new, and those who came before us saw nothing more. In a way, anyone who is forty years old, if they have any understanding at all, has seen everything that has been and everything that will be -- so uniform is the world. This too belongs to the rational soul: love of one's neighbor, truth, modesty, and valuing nothing above itself -- which is also the property of law. And so right reason is no different from the reason of justice.

You'll stop caring about pleasant music, dancing, and combat sports if you break the melody into its individual notes and ask yourself about each one: Does this master me? You'd be ashamed to say yes. Do the same with dancing -- examine each movement, each position. The same with combat. In all things except virtue and virtuous action, remember to take things apart into their components. By this division, come to see them for how little they are. Apply this to your whole life.

What a soul it is that stands ready -- if at any moment it must be separated from the body -- ready to be extinguished, or scattered, or to go on existing. But this readiness must come from its own deliberate judgement, not from sheer stubbornness, like the Christians. It must be thoughtful, dignified, and convincing to others -- without theatrics.

Have I done something for the common good? Then I've received my reward. Keep this always in front of you, and never stop doing good.

What is your craft? To be good. And how is that accomplished well, except through clear principles -- some about the nature of the universe, others about how a human being is made?

At first, tragedies were staged as a way to remind people that these things happen -- that it's natural for them to happen -- and that you shouldn't be troubled by what occurs on the larger stage of life when you're entertained by the same events on the theatrical one. You can see that things must unfold this way, and that even those who cry out "O Cithaeron!" bear what comes. Indeed, the dramatists say some fine things. Especially this:

If the gods neglect me and my children,
this too has its reason.

And again:

We must not chafe and fret at what happens.

And:

Life's harvest reap like the wheat's fruitful ear.

And other lines of the same kind.

After tragedy came the old comedy, which spoke with a bold freedom and used its very bluntness to warn against arrogance. Diogenes borrowed from these writers for the same purpose.

But notice what the middle comedy became after that, and then the purpose behind the new comedy -- which gradually declined into nothing more than clever imitation. Everyone knows that even these writers say some good things. But the whole plan of this kind of poetry and drama -- what does it really aim at?

How obvious it is that no condition of life is better suited for philosophy than the one you happen to be in right now.

A branch cut off from the branch beside it is necessarily cut off from the whole tree. In the same way, a person cut off from another person has fallen away from the whole community. Now, a branch is cut off by someone else. But a person separates himself from his neighbor by his own act -- when he hates and turns away. He doesn't realize that he has also cut himself off from the entire social order. Yet there is this gift from Zeus, who formed us for community: we can grow back to the one beside us and become part of the whole again. But if this separation happens often, it makes the detached part harder to unite and restore. The branch that grew with the tree from the beginning, sharing one life with it, is not the same as one that was cut off and then grafted back on. As the gardeners say: it grows with the tree, but it doesn't think with it.

When people try to stand in your way as you follow right reason, don't let them turn you from the right action. But equally, don't let them drive you from your goodwill toward them. Guard yourself on both fronts: in steady judgement and action, and also in gentleness toward those who try to block or trouble you. It's a weakness to get annoyed at them, just as it's a weakness to abandon your course of action and give in out of fear. Both are equally deserters: the one who caves in from fear and the one who turns against someone who is, by nature, a neighbor and a friend.

No nature falls short of art -- because the arts imitate nature. If that's true, then the most perfect and comprehensive nature of all cannot be less skillful than any craft. Now, all crafts do lesser things for the sake of greater ones. The universal nature does the same. And here is the origin of justice, and from justice all other virtues have their foundation. Justice cannot be maintained if we care about things that don't matter, or if we're easily deceived, careless, and changeable.

If the things that disturb you don't come to you, still, in a way, you go to them. Let your judgement about them be at rest, and they will stay quiet. You won't be seen chasing or fleeing.

The soul maintains its spherical form when it doesn't reach out toward anything, or contract inward, or scatter, or collapse -- but shines with the light by which it sees the truth. The truth of all things, and the truth within itself.

Suppose someone despises me. That's his concern. My concern is this: that I not be caught doing or saying anything worthy of contempt. Suppose someone hates me. His problem. I will be kind and generous to everyone, ready to show even him his mistake -- not to shame him, not to show off my patience, but honestly and genuinely. Like Phocion -- unless he was only pretending. That's what the inner self should look like. The gods should see a person who is neither resentful of anything nor complaining. What harm can come to you if you're doing what your own nature requires and accepting what the universe finds fitting -- since you're a human being posted here so that the common good can be accomplished?

People despise one another and flatter one another. They want to rise above one another and grovel before one another.

How hollow and false is the person who announces: "I've decided to deal with you honestly." What are you doing? There's no need to give this notice. It'll show on its own. It ought to be written on your face. The voice should be heard in the eyes -- the way a lover reads everything in the eyes of the beloved, immediately. The honest and good person should be like someone who smells strong: the moment you come near, you catch it, whether you want to or not. But the performance of sincerity is a crooked stick. Nothing is worse than a friendship that's really a predator wearing a mask. Avoid this above all. The good, the simple, the generous -- it shows in their eyes. There's no mistaking it.

As for living well, this power lies in the soul -- if it can be indifferent to things that are indifferent. And it will be indifferent if it looks at each of these things separately and as a whole, and remembers that none of them forces a judgement on us. They don't come to us. They stand still. We are the ones who generate judgements about them and, so to speak, inscribe them on ourselves. It is in our power not to inscribe them. And if any have crept in unnoticed, it is in our power to wipe them away. Remember, too, that this kind of attention is only needed for a short time -- then life will be over. And what's so hard about it? If these things are in keeping with nature, welcome them and they'll come easily. If they're against nature, then look for what does accord with your own nature and strive for that, even if it brings no fame. Everyone is allowed to seek their own good.

Consider where each thing comes from, what it's made of, what it changes into, what it will be after the change -- and that it will suffer no harm.

If someone wrongs you, consider first: What is my relation to other people? We were made for one another. And in another way, I was made to be set over them -- as a ram over a flock, or a bull over a herd. But start from first principles. If all things are not mere atoms, then it is nature that governs everything. If so, lower things exist for the sake of higher ones, and higher ones for one another.

Second, consider what kind of people they are -- at the table, in bed, and so on. Especially, what beliefs compel them. And how much pride they take in doing what they do.

Third, if people do right, you have no reason to be displeased. If they do wrong, it's clearly involuntary and from ignorance. Every soul is unwillingly deprived of the truth, just as it is unwillingly deprived of the ability to treat each person as they deserve. That's why people are stung when they're called unjust, ungrateful, greedy -- wrongdoers against their neighbors.

Fourth, consider that you do many things wrong yourself. You're a human being like the rest. Even if you abstain from certain faults, you still have the disposition to commit them -- and it may be only cowardice, or concern for your reputation, or some other ignoble reason that holds you back.

Fifth, consider that you can't even be sure whether people are doing wrong. Many things are done for reasons you don't understand. A person needs to learn a great deal before passing correct judgement on another's actions.

Sixth, when you're deeply frustrated or grieved, remember that human life is only a moment. Before long, we'll all be laid out dead.

Seventh, it isn't people's actions that disturb us -- those actions have their roots in their own principles. It's our own judgements that disturb us. Strip away those judgements. Resolve to stop seeing the act as something terrible, and the anger dissolves. How do you strip them away? By reflecting that no one else's wrongful act brings shame on you. Unless shameful things alone are evil, then you too must do many wrong things -- become a robber and everything else.

Eighth, consider how much more pain the anger and frustration caused by such acts bring us than the acts themselves.

Ninth, consider that a good disposition is invincible -- if it's genuine, not a fake smile or a performance. What can the most aggressive person do to you if you remain kind to them? If, as the opportunity arises, you gently set them right, calmly correcting their mistake at the very moment they're trying to harm you -- saying: "No, my child. We were made for something else. I won't be harmed. But you are harming yourself, my child." Show them with gentle skill and broad principles that this is so -- that even bees don't act this way, nor any creature made by nature for community. But do it without sarcasm and without reproach. Do it with genuine affection, with no bitterness in your soul. Not as if you're lecturing. Not so that some bystander can admire you. Speak to them alone -- and if others are present...

Remember these nine rules as if the Muses themselves had given them to you. Begin at last to be a human being while you're still alive. But guard equally against flattering people and being angry at them -- both are antisocial and lead to harm. And in the heat of anger, hold on to this: being moved by passion is not strength. Gentleness and calm, being more in keeping with human nature, are also more manly. The one who possesses these qualities possesses real strength, nerve, and courage -- not the one enslaved to fits of rage and resentment. The closer the mind is to freedom from passion, the closer it is to power. Grief is a mark of weakness. So is anger. Both are wounds. Both are surrender.

But if you like, accept also a tenth gift, from Apollo, leader of the Muses: To expect bad people not to do wrong is madness. It's wishing for the impossible. But to let them wrong others and then expect them not to wrong you -- that is irrational and tyrannical.

There are four corruptions of your rational mind that you should constantly guard against. When you catch them, wipe them out, saying to yourself in each case: This thought is unnecessary. This thought destroys social connection. What you're about to say doesn't come from your real thinking -- and for a person not to speak from their real thoughts is among the most absurd things there are. The fourth: whenever you reproach yourself for something. That is evidence that the divine part in you has been overpowered by the lesser and more perishable part -- the body and its crude pleasures.

The airy and fiery parts of your composition, though they naturally tend upward, still obey the arrangement of the universe and hold their place in the compound mass of the body. And the earthy and watery parts, though they naturally tend downward, are raised up and occupy a position that isn't natural to them. Even the elements obey the whole -- when they've been assigned a place, they stay there until the signal for dissolution is given. Isn't it strange, then, that your intelligent part alone should rebel and resent its place? No force is imposed on it -- only what is in keeping with its nature. Yet it won't submit. It goes the opposite way. Every movement toward injustice, excess, anger, grief, or fear is a departure from nature. And when your rational mind is discontented with anything that happens, it also deserts its post. It was made for reverence and piety toward the gods no less than for justice. These too fall under the heading of contentment with how things are -- and in fact they come before justice.

A person who doesn't have one consistent purpose in life cannot be one consistent person throughout it. But that's not enough -- you must also ask: what should that purpose be? Because it's not just any aim held by the majority that matters, but only those that concern the common good. The person who directs all their efforts toward this will make all their actions alike, and will always be the same person.

Think of the country mouse and the town mouse -- and how alarmed and anxious the town mouse was.

Socrates used to call the opinions of the masses "Lamiae" -- bogeymen to scare children.

The Spartans at their public games used to put seats in the shade for visitors, and sat down wherever they could themselves.

Socrates declined Perdiccas's invitation, saying: "I don't want to die the worst of all deaths -- to receive a kindness I can't repay."

In the writings of the Ephesians there was this rule: always keep in mind someone from the past who practiced virtue.

The Pythagoreans tell us to look at the sky each morning, to remember those bodies that do the same things, always in the same way -- and to remember their purity and openness. There is no veil over a star.

Think of what kind of man Socrates was when he wrapped himself in a skin after Xanthippe took his cloak and left. Think of what he said to his friends, who were embarrassed for him and shrank back when they saw how he was dressed.

In writing and reading, you can't set rules for others until you've first learned to follow rules yourself. All the more true in life.

A slave you are: free speech is not for you.

-- And my heart laughed within.
(Odyssey IX, 413)

And virtue they will curse, speaking harsh words.
(Hesiod, Works and Days, 184)

To look for figs in winter is a madman's act. So is looking for a child when that child is no longer given to you.

When a man kisses his child, said Epictetus, he should whisper to himself: "Tomorrow you may die." -- But those are words of bad omen! -- "No word is a word of bad omen," said Epictetus, "if it describes a work of nature. If it is, then it's also bad omen to speak of the grain being harvested."

The unripe grape, the ripe bunch, the dried raisin -- all are changes, not into nothing, but into something that doesn't yet exist.

No one can rob us of our free will.

Epictetus also said: A person must develop a discipline for giving assent. In the area of impulse, they must take care that it serves social ends, that it respects the value of the thing, that it fits the circumstances. As for sensual desire, they should stay clear of it altogether. And as for aversion, they should direct it at nothing outside their own power.

The stakes, he said, are not trivial. It's a question of sanity or madness.

Socrates used to say: What do you want? Rational souls or irrational ones? -- Rational. -- What kind of rational souls? Sound ones or unsound? -- Sound. -- Then why don't you go looking for them? -- Because we already have them. -- Then why are you fighting and quarreling?

Book XII

All those things you want to reach by the long way around — you can have them now, if you'll stop refusing them. All it takes is this: let go of the past. Trust the future to providence. And direct the present toward reverence and justice. Toward reverence, so you can be content with what you've been given — because nature designed it for you and you for it. Toward justice, so you can speak the truth freely and without disguise, and act according to what is right and what each situation deserves. Don't let anyone else's wickedness stand in your way, or the judgements of others, or what they say, or the sensations of this poor flesh that has grown around you — the body can deal with its own troubles. If, when the time comes for your departure, you set aside everything else and honor only your rational mind and the god within you — if what you fear is not that you will someday stop living, but that you never truly began to live in harmony with nature — then you will be worthy of the universe that produced you. You'll stop being a stranger in your own homeland. You'll stop being amazed at things that happen every day as though they were unexpected. You'll stop being at the mercy of this or that.

God sees the minds of all people stripped of their material casing, their outer shell, their impurities. With his intelligence alone, he touches only the intelligence that has flowed from himself into these bodies. If you train yourself to do the same, you'll free yourself from so much needless trouble. Someone who pays no attention to the poor flesh that envelops them — would they really trouble themselves over clothing, housing, fame, and all the rest of that show?

You are made of three things: a body, breath, and intelligence. The first two are yours only insofar as you're responsible for taking care of them. The third alone is truly yours. So if you separate from your understanding everything that others do or say, everything you yourself have done or said, everything about the future that troubles you because it might happen, everything attached to the body or the breath that clings to you beyond your control, everything the external current of events swirls around you — if you free your intellectual power from all of this so it can live pure and unbound, doing what is just, accepting what happens, and speaking the truth — if you strip away from your rational mind the baggage of sensation, of future and past, and make yourself like Empedocles' sphere:

All round, and in its joyous rest reposing —

and if you focus on living only what is really your life — the present — then you'll be able to pass the time remaining to you in peace, with dignity, and in obedience to the god within you.

I've often wondered how it is that everyone loves themselves more than anyone else, and yet values their own self-assessment less than the opinion of others. If a god or a wise teacher appeared and told someone to think nothing and plan nothing that they wouldn't immediately say aloud, that person couldn't endure it for a single day. So we give more weight to what our neighbors think of us than to what we think of ourselves.

How is it possible that the gods, having arranged everything so well and with such goodwill toward humanity, overlooked just this one thing — that certain people, very good people, people who had the deepest communion with the divine through their piety and devotion, once dead should never exist again but be completely extinguished?

But if that's how it is, rest assured: if it should have been otherwise, the gods would have made it so. If it were just, it would be possible. If it were in keeping with nature, nature would have brought it about. The fact that it isn't so — if indeed it isn't — should convince you that it shouldn't be so. You can see for yourself that in raising this question, you're arguing with the gods. And we wouldn't argue with the gods this way unless they were supremely good and supremely just. And if they are, they would not have allowed anything in the order of the universe to be neglected unjustly or irrationally.

Practice even the things you've given up hope of mastering. The left hand is useless for most tasks because it's never been trained — but it holds the reins more firmly than the right hand, because it has been trained for that.

Think about what condition a person should be in, both in body and in soul, when death overtakes them. Think about how short life is. The bottomless abyss of time behind you and ahead of you. The fragility of all matter.

Look at the underlying principles of things, stripped of their coverings. Look at the real purposes behind actions. Consider what pain actually is. What pleasure actually is. What death is. What fame is. Ask who is really the cause of their own unrest. Consider that no one is truly blocked by another person. That everything comes back to judgement.

In applying your principles, be like the wrestler, not the gladiator. The gladiator puts down his sword and gets killed. The wrestler always has his hands and needs nothing more than to use them.

See things for what they are. Break them down into their matter, their form, and their purpose.

What power a person has — to do nothing that God would not approve, and to accept everything that God assigns.

When things happen in accordance with nature, don't blame the gods — they do nothing wrong, whether by choice or by accident. Don't blame people either — they do nothing wrong except by accident. Blame no one.

How absurd — to be surprised at anything that happens in life.

Either there is an unbreakable necessity and fixed order, or a providence that can be moved by prayer, or a purposeless chaos with no one in charge. If it's unbreakable necessity, why resist? If it's a providence that answers to those who deserve it, make yourself worthy of divine help. If it's directionless chaos, take comfort: in such a storm you have within you a rational mind to steer by. And even if the storm carries you off, let it carry off the flesh, the breath, the rest. The mind it cannot touch.

Does the light of a lamp shine without fading until it's put out? And will the truth within you, your sense of justice, your self-control — will these be extinguished before you die?

When someone appears to have done wrong, say to yourself: How do I know this was actually wrong? And even if it was, how do I know he hasn't already condemned himself for it? That would be like tearing his own face. Consider: wanting bad people not to do bad things is like wanting fig trees not to produce sap, babies not to cry, horses not to whinny — things that simply must be, given their nature. What else can a person of that character do? If you're up to it, cure the disposition.

If it's not right, don't do it. If it's not true, don't say it. Let this be your constant effort —

In every situation, always examine what it is that produces an impression in you. Break it down into its form, its matter, its purpose, and the time within which it must come to an end.

Realize at last that you have something inside you better and more divine than the things that tug at you like puppet strings, stirring up your emotions. What is in my mind right now? Is it fear? Suspicion? Desire? Something else of that kind?

First, do nothing thoughtlessly or without a purpose. Second, make sure your actions aim at nothing other than the common good.

Remember that before long you'll be no one, nowhere. Nothing you see now will exist. No one alive today will still be living. Everything is formed by nature to change, to turn, to dissolve — so that other things may come into being in their place.

Remember that everything is judgement, and judgement is in your power. Take away the judgement whenever you choose, and like a sailor who has rounded the headland, you'll find calm waters, everything still, a sheltered bay.

Any single activity, when it has ended at its proper time, suffers no harm from having ended. And the person who performed it suffers no harm simply because it's over. In the same way, the whole series of activities that makes up a life — if it ends at the proper time — suffers no harm from having ended. And the person whose series comes to its natural close has not been dealt with badly. The proper time and the limit are set by nature — sometimes by your own particular nature, as in old age, but always by the nature of the universe, whose parts are constantly changing so the whole remains ever young and vital. Whatever serves the universe is always good and always timely. So the end of life is no evil for anyone. It is not shameful — it is beyond your control and does no harm to the common good. It is good, because it comes at the right time and serves the whole. And in this way, the person who moves in step with the divine — moved in the same direction, toward the same things in their mind — is carried by the divine itself.

Keep three principles ready. First: in what you do, act neither thoughtlessly nor in any way that justice herself would not approve. As for what happens to you from outside, it comes either by chance or by providence — and you should neither blame chance nor accuse providence. Second: consider what each being is, from seed to the moment it receives a soul, and from that moment to when it gives the soul back. Consider what it's made of and what it dissolves into. Third: imagine you were suddenly lifted high above the earth and could look down on all of human life — the immense variety of it — while also seeing at a glance the vast numbers of beings dwelling in the air and the sky around you. Every time you were lifted up, you'd see the same things. The same patterns. The same brevity. And these are the things we're so proud of?

Let go of your judgements. You are saved. Who is stopping you from letting them go?

When you're troubled by anything, you've forgotten this: that everything happens according to the nature of the universe. And this: that another person's wrongful act is nothing to you. And this: that everything that happens has always happened this way, will always happen this way, and is happening this way right now, everywhere. And this: how close the bond is between any one person and the whole human race — a bond not of blood or seed but of shared intelligence. And you've forgotten this: that every person's mind is a god, an outflow of the divine. And this: that nothing truly belongs to anyone — your child, your body, your very soul all came from the divine. And this: that everything is judgement. And this: that the only time anyone lives or loses is the present moment.

Keep running through the list in your mind: all those who complained bitterly about something. All those who rose to the highest fame, or were struck by the worst disasters, or were consumed by feuds, or achieved every kind of fortune. Then ask: where are they all now? Smoke and ash and a story — or not even a story. And think of everything like this too. Fabius Catullinus in his country estate. Lucius Lupus in his gardens. Stertinius at Baiae. Tiberius at Capri. Velius Rufus. And in every case, the relentless pursuit of something, combined with pride. Think about how worthless all of it is. How much better it is for a person, given the opportunities life presents, to simply be just, self-controlled, obedient to the gods — and to do it all without pretension. Because the pride that prides itself on its lack of pride is the hardest of all to stomach.

To those who ask, "Where have you seen the gods? How do you know they exist, that you worship them so?" I answer: first, they can be perceived even with the eyes. But second — I haven't seen my own soul either, and yet I honor it. The same with the gods. From what I constantly experience of their power, I know they exist, and I revere them.

The safety of life lies in this: to examine everything thoroughly — what it is in itself, what its matter is, what gives it form. To do justice and speak truth with your whole soul. What remains but to enjoy life, joining one good thing to another without leaving even the smallest gap between them?

There is one light of the sun, even though walls, mountains, and countless other things interrupt it. There is one common substance, even though it is distributed among countless bodies, each with its own qualities. There is one soul, even though it is divided among infinite natures and individual boundaries. There is one intelligent soul, even though it seems to be split apart. Now, the other parts of these things — air and matter, for instance — have no awareness and no connection to one another. Yet even they are held together by the intelligent principle and drawn by gravity toward the same center. But intelligence has a special tendency: it reaches out toward what is like itself and joins with it. The pull toward community is not broken.

What is it you want? To keep existing? To have sensation? To move? To grow — and then stop growing? To speak? To think? Which of these seems worth longing for? And if each of them is easy to dismiss, then turn to what remains: to follow reason and to follow God. But it contradicts the honoring of reason and God to be upset at losing these other things through death.

How small a fraction of the boundless and unfathomable stretch of time is given to each of us — swallowed up so quickly in eternity. How small a fraction of the whole of matter. How small a fraction of the universal soul. And what a tiny clod of the whole earth you creep across. Reflecting on all this, consider nothing to be great except to act as your nature leads you and to endure what the common nature brings.

How does your rational mind make use of itself? Everything depends on that. Everything else, whether within your control or not, is lifeless ash and smoke.

Here is the most powerful argument against fearing death: even those who believe pleasure is the good and pain is the evil have still managed to despise it.

For the person to whom only what comes at the right time is good, to whom it makes no difference whether they've performed more or fewer acts in accordance with right reason, to whom it doesn't matter whether they've observed the world for a longer or shorter time — for this person, death holds no terror.

You have been a citizen in this great city — the world. What does it matter whether for five years or for three? What is in keeping with the law is fair for everyone. So where is the hardship, if it's not some tyrant or corrupt judge who sends you away, but the same nature that brought you in? It's like a director dismissing an actor from the stage. "But I've only performed three of the five acts!" Yes — but in your life, three acts are the whole play. The complete drama is determined by the one who once composed it and now dissolves it. You are the author of neither. So leave gracefully. The one who releases you is satisfied.