BOOK 4 -4

If mind is common to us all, then we have reason also in common - that which makes us rational beings. If so, then common too is the reason which dictates what we should or should not do. If so, then law too is common to us all. If so, we share in constitution. if so, the universe is a kind of community. In what else could one say that the whole human race shares a common constitution?

BOOK 4 -3-4

Finally, then, remember this retreat into your own little territory within yourself. Above all, no agonies, no tensions. Be your own master, and look at things as a man, as a human being, as a citizen, as a mortal  creature. And here are two of the most immediately useful thoughts you will dip into. First that things cannot touch the mind: they are external and inert; anxieties can only come from your internal judgement. Second, that all these things that you see will change almost as you look at them, and then will be no more. Constantly bring to mind all that you have already seen changed. The universe is change: life is judgement.

BOOK 4 -3-3

Well then, will a little fame distract you? Look at the speed of universal oblivion, the gulf of immeasurable time both before and after, the vacuity of applause, the indiscriminate fickleness of apparent supporters, the tiny room in which all this is confined. The whole earth is a mere point in space: what a minute cranny within this is your own habitation, and how many and what sort will sing your praises here!

BOOK 4 - 3-2

And what is it you will resent? Human wickedness? Recall the conclusion that rational creatures are born for each other's sake, that tolerance is a part of justice, that wrongdoing is not deliberate. Consider the number of people who spent their lives in enmity, suspicion, hatred , outright war, and were then laid out for burial or reduced to ashes. Stop, then. or will you fret at your allocation from the Whole? Revisit the alternatives - providence or atoms - and the many indications that the universe is a kind of community. But will matters of the flesh still have their hold on you. Consider that the mind, once it has abstracted itself and come to know its own defining power, has no contact with the movement of the bodily spirit, be that smooth or troubled: and finally remember all that you have heard and agreed about pain and pleasure.

BOOK 4 -3

Men seek retreats for themselves - in the country, by the sea, in the hills, - and you yourself are particularly prone to this yearning. But all this is quite unphilosophic, when it is open to you, at any time you want, to retreat into yourself. No retreat offers someone more quiet and relaxation than that into his own mind, especially if he can dip into thoughts there which put him at immediate and complete ease: I simply mean a well-ordered life. So constantly give yourself this retreat, and renew yourself. The doctrines you will visit there should be few and fundamental, sufficient at one meeting to wash away all your pain and send you back free of resentment at what you must rejoin.

BOOK 4 -2

No action should be undertaken without aim, or other than in conformity with a principal affirming the art of life.

BOOK 4 -1

Wherever it is in agreement with nature, the ruling power within us takes a flexible approach to circumstances, always adapting  itself easily to both practicality and the given event. It has no favored material for its work, but sets out on its objects in a conditional way, turning any obstacle into material for its own use. It is like a fire mastering whatever falls into it. A small flame would extinguished, but a bright fire rapidly claims as its own all that is heaped on it, devours it all, and leaps up yet higher in consequence.

BOOK 3 16-2

And if all people mistrust him, for living a simple, decent life, and cheerful life, he has  no quarrel with any of them, and no diversion from the road which leads to the final goal of his life: to this he must come pure, at peace, ready to depart, in unforced harmony with his fate.

BOOK 3 -16

Body, soul, mind. To the body belong sense perceptions, to the soul impulses, to the mind judgements. The receipt of sense impressions is shared with cattle; response to the puppet-strings of impulse is shared with wild beasts, with catamites, with a Phalaris or a Nero; having the mind as guide to what appears appropriate action is shared with those who do not believe in the gods, those who betray their country, those who get up to anything behind closed doors.

So if all else is held in common with the categories mentioned above, it follows that the defining characteristic of the good person is to love and embrace whatever happens to him along within his breast, or trouble it with a welter of confused impressions, but to preserve its constant favor, in proper allegiance to god, saying only what is true, doing only what is just.

BOOK 3 -15

They do not know all the meanings of theft, of sowing, of buying, of keeping at rest, of seeing what needs to be done - this is not for the eye, but for a different sort of vision.

BOOK 3 -14

No more wandering. You are not likely to read your own jottings, your histories of the ancient Greeks and Romans, your extracts from their literature laid up for your old age. Hurry then to the end, abandon vain hopes, rescue yourself, if you have any care for yourself, while the opportunity is still there.

BOOK 3 -13

Just as doctors always have their instruments and knives at hand for any emergency treatment, so you should have your doctrines ready for the recognition of the divine and the human, and the performance of every action, even the smallest, in consciousness of the bond which unities the two. No action in the human context will succeed without reference to the divine nor vice-versa. 

BOOK 3 -12

If you set yourself to your present task along the path of true reason, with all determination, vigor, and good will: if you admit no distractions, but keep your own divinity pure and standing strong, as if you had to surrender it right now, if you grapple this to you, expecting nothing, shirking nothing, but self-content with each present action taken in accordance with nature and a heroic truthfulness in all that you say and mean - then you will lead a good life. And nobody is able to stop you.

BOOK 3 -11-3

Ask then, what is this which is now making its impression on me? What is it composed of? How long in the nature of things will it last?  What virtue is needed to meet it - gentleness, for example, or courage, truthfulness, loyalty, simplicity, self-sufficiency, and so on? So in each case we must say: This has come from god; this is due to a juncture of fate, the mesh of destiny, or some similar coincidence of chance; and this is from my fellow man, my kinsman and colleague, though one who does not know what accords with his own nature. But I do know: and so I treat him kindly and fairly, following the natural law of our fellowship, but at the same time I aim to give him his proper desert in matters which are morally natural.

BOOK 3 -11-2

Nothing is so conductive to greatness of mind as the ability to subject each element of our existence in life to methodical and truthful examination, always at the same time using this scrutiny as a means to reflect on the nature of the universe, the contribution any given action or event makes to that nature, the value this has for the Whole, and the value it has for man - and man is an inhabitant of this highest of City, of which all other cities are mere households.

Book 3 -11

One addition to the precepts already mentioned. Always make a definition or sketch of what presents itself to your mind, so you can see it stripped bare to its essential nature and identify it clearly, in whole and in all its parts, and can tell yourself its proper name and the names of those elements of which it is compounded and into which it will be dissolved.

BOOK 3 -10

So discard all else and secure these few things only.  Remind yourself too that each of us lives only in the present moment, a mere fragment of time: the rest is life past or uncertain future. Sure life is a small thing, and the small cranny of the earth in which we live it: small too, even the longest fame thereafter which is itself subject to a succession of little men who will quickly die, and have no knowledge even of themselves, let alone of those long dead.

Book 3 -9

Revere your power of judgement. All rests on this to make sure that your directing mind no longer entertains any judgement which fails to agree with nature or the constitution of rational being. And this state guarantees deliberate thought, affinity with other men, and obedience to the gods.

BOOK 3 -8

In the mind of one who is chastened and cleansed you will find no suppuration, no simmering ulcer, no sore festering under the skin. Fate does not catch him with his life unfulfilled, as one might speak of an actor leaving the stage before his part is finished and the play is over. Moreover you will find nothing servile or pretentious, no dependance or alienation, nothing to answer for, no lurking fault.

BOOK 3 -7

Never regard as a benefit to yourself anything which will force you at some point to break your faith, to leave integrity behind, to hate, suspect, or curse another, to dissemble, to covet anything needing secrecy of walls and drapes. A man who has put first his mind and divinity, and worships the supremacy of the god within him, makes no drama of his life, no handwringing, no craving for solitude or crowds: most of all: his will be a life of neither pursuit not avoidance, and it is of no remote concern to him whether he will retain the bodily envelopment of his soul for longer or shorter time. Even if release must come here and now, he will depart as easily as he would perform any other act that admits of integrity and decency. Throughout all his life his one precaution is that his mind should not shift to a state without affinity to a rational and social being.

BOOK 3 -6-3

Because it is not right that the rational and social good should be rivaled by anything of a different order, for example the praise of the many, or power, or wealth, or the enjoyment of pleasure. All these things may suit for a while, but they can suddenly take control and carry you away. So you, I repeat, must simply and freely choose the better and hold to it. 'But better is what benefits.' If to your benefit as a rational being, adopt it, but if simply to your benefit as an animal, reject it, and stick to your judgment without fanfare. Only make sure that your scrutiny is sound.

BOOK 3 -6

If you discover in human life something better than justice, truth, self-control, courage - in short, something better than the self-sufficiency of your own mind which keeps you acting in accord with true reason and accepts your inheritance of fate in all outside your choice: if as I say, you can see something better than this, then turn it with all your heart and enjoy this prime good you have found. But if nothing is shown to be better than the very god that is seated in you, which has brought all your own impulses under its control, which scrutinizes your thoughts, which has withdrawn itself, as Socrates used to say, from all inducements of the senses, which has subordinated itself to the gods and takes care of men - if you find all else by comparison with this small and paltry, - then give no room to anything else: once turned and inclined to any alternative, you will struggle thereafter to restore the primacy of that good which is yours and yours alone.

BOOK 3 -5

You should take no action unwillingly, selfishly, uncritically, or with conflicting motives. Do not dress up your thoughts in smart finery: do not be a gabbler or a meddler. Further, let the god that is within you be the champion of the being you are - a male, mature in years, as statesman, a Roman, a ruler: one who has taken his post like a soldier waiting for the Retreat from life to sound, and ready to depart, past the need for any loyal oath or human witness. And see that you keep a cheerful demeanour, and retain your independence of outside help and the peace which others can give. Your duty is to stand straight - not held straight. 

BOOK 3 -4-4

He bears in mind too the kinship of all rational beings, and that caring for all men is in accordance with man's nature: but that nonetheless he should not hold to the opinions of all, but only of those who live their lives in agreement with nature. He will constantly remind himself what sort of people they are who do not lead such lives - what they are like both at home and abroad, by night and by day, they and the polluting company they keep. So he disregard even the praise of such men - these are people who are not even satisfied with themselves.

BOOK 3 -4-3

A man such as this, if he postpones no longer his ready place among the best, is in some way a priest and minister of the gods. He responds to the divinity seated within him, and this renders the man unsullied by pleasures, unscathed by any pain, untouched by any wrong, unconscious of any wickedness; a wrestler for the greatest prize of all, to avoid being thrown by any passion; dyed to the core with justice; embracing with his whole heart all the experience allotted to him; rarely, and only when there is great need for the common good, wondering what others may be saying or doing or thinking, he has only his own work to bring to fulfillment, and only his own fated allocation from the Whole to claim his constant attention. As for his work, he makes it excellent: as for his lot, he is convinced it is good. And each person's appointed lot is both his fellow-passenger and his driver.

BOOK 3 -4-2

No, in the sequence of your thoughts you must avoid all that is casual or aimless, and most particularly anything prying or malicious. Train yourself to think only thoughts such that in answer to the sudden question 'What is in your mind now?' you could say with immediate frankness whatever it is, this or that: and so your answer can give direct evidence that all your thoughts are straightforward and kindly, the thoughts of a social being who has no regard for the fancies of pleasure or wider indulgence, for rivalry, malice, suspicion, or anything else that one would blush to admit was in one's mind.

BOOK 3 -4

Do not waste the remaining part of your life in thoughts about other people, when you are not thinking with reference to some aspect of the common good. Why deprive yourself of the time for some other task? I mean, thinking about what so-and-so is doing, and why, what he is saying or contemplating or plotting, and all that line of thought, makes you stray from the close watch on your own directing mind.

BOOK 3 -3

Hippocrates cured many diseases then died of disease himself. The Chaldean astrologers foretold the deaths of many people, then their own fated day claimed them. Alexander, Pompey, Julius Caeser annihilated whole cities time after time, and slaughtered tens of thousands of horse and foot in the field of battle, and yet the moment came for them too to depart this life. Heraclitus speculated long on the conflagration of the universe, but the water of dropsy filled his guts and he died caked in a poultice of cow-dung. Vermin were the death of Democritus, and vermin of another sort killed Socrates. What of it now? You embarked, you set sail, you made port. Go ashore now. if it is to another life, nothing is empty of the gods, even on the shore: and if to insensibility, you will cease to suffer pains and pleasures, no longer in the thrall to a bodily vessel which is a master as far inferior as its servant is superior. One is mind and divinity: the other a clay of dust and blood.

BOOK 3 -2

We should also attend to things like these, observing that even the incidental effects of the processes of Nature have their own charm and attraction. Take the baking of bread. The loaf splits open here and there, and those very cracks, in one way a failure of the baker's profession, somehow catch the eye and give particular stimulus to our appetite. Figs likewise burst open at full maturity: and in olives ripened on the tree the very proximity of decay lends a special beauty to the fruit. Similarly the ears of the corn nodding down to the ground, the lion's puckered brow, the foam gushing from the boar's mouth, and much else besides - looked at in isolation these things are far from lovely, but their consequence on the processes of Nature enhances them and gives them attraction. So any man with a feeling and a deeper insight for the workings of the Whole will find some pleasure in consequences. Such a man will take no less delight in the living snarl of wild animals than in all the imitative representations of painters and sculptors; he will see a kind of bloom and fresh beauty in a an old woman or an old man; and he will be able to look with sober eyes on the seductive charm of his own slave boys. Not all can share this conviction - only one who has developed a genuine affinity for Nature and her works. For him there will be many perceptions.

BOOK 3 -1 (Written in Carnuntum)

We must take into our reckoning not only that life is expended day by day and the remaining balance diminishes, but also this further consideration: if we live longer, there is no guarantee that our mind will likewise retain that power to comprehend and study the world which contributes to our experience of things divine and human. If dementia sets in, there will be no failure of such faculties as breathing, feeding, imagination, desire: before these go, the earlier extinction is of one's proper use of oneself, one's accurate assessment of the gradations of duty, one's ability to analyze impressions, one's understanding of whether the time has come to leave this life - these and all other matters which wholly depend on trained calculation. So we must have a sense of urgency, not only for the ever closer approach of death, but also because our comprehension of the world and our ability to pay proper attention will fade before we do.

BOOK 2 -17 -2

What then can escort us on our way? One thing, and one thing only: philosophy. This consists in keeping the divinity within us inviolate and free from harm, master of pleasure and pain, doing nothing without aim,truth, or integrity, and independent of others' action or failure to act. Further, accepting all that happens and is allotted to it as coming from that source which is its own origin: and at all times awaiting death with the glad confidence that it is nothing more than the dissolution of the elements of which ever living creature is composed. Now if there is nothing fearful for the elements themselves in their constant changing of each into another, why should one look anxiously in prospect at the change and dissolution of them all? This is in accordance with nature: and nothing harmful is in accordance with nature.

BOOK 2 -17

In a man's life his time is a mere instant, his existence a flux, his perception fogged, his whole body compositions rotting, his mind a whirligig, his fortune unpredictable, his fame unclear. To put it shortly: all things of the body stream away like a river, all things of the mind are dreams and delusion; life is warfare, and a visit in a strange land; the only lasting fame is oblivion.

BOOK 2 -16

The soul of a man harms itself, first and foremost, when it becomes (as far as it can) a separate growth, a sort of tumor on the universe: because to resent anything that happens is to separate oneself in revolt from Nature, which holds in collective embrace the particular natures of all other things. Secondly, when it turns away from another human being, or is even carried so far in opposition as to intend him harm - such is the case in the souls of those gripped by anger. A soul harms itself, thirdly, when it gives in to pleasure or pain. Fourthly, whenever it dissimulates, doing or saying anything feigned or false. Fifthly, whenever it fails to direct any of its own actions or impulses to a goal, but acts at random, without conscious attention - whereas even the most trivial action should be undertaken in reference to the end. And the end for rational creatures is to follow the reason and the rule of the most venerable archetype of a governing state - the Universe.

BOOK 2 -15

'All is as thinking makes it so'.The retort made to Monimus the Cynic is clear enough: but clear too is the value of his saying, if one takes the kernel of it, as far as it is true.

BOOK 2 -14

Even if you were destined to live three thousand years, or ten times that long, nonetheless remember that no one loses any life other than the one he lives, or lives any life other than the one he loses. It follows that the longest and the shortest lives are brought to the same state. The present moment is equal for all; so what is passing is equal also; the loss therefore turns out to be the merest fragment of time. No one can lose either the past or the future - how could anyone be deprived of what he does not possess?

So always remember these two things. First, that all things have have been of the same kind from everlasting, coming round and round again, and it makes no difference whether one will see the same things for a hundred years, or two hundred years, or for an infinity of time. Second, that both the longest lived and the earliest to die suffer the same loss. It is only the present moment of which either stands to be deprived: and if indeed this is all he has, he cannot lose what he does not have.

BOOK 2 -13

Nothing is more miserable than one who is always out and about, running round everything in circles - in Pindar's words 'delving deep in the bowels of the earth ' - and looking for signs and symptoms to divine his neighbors's minds. He does not realize that it is sufficient to concentrate solely on the divinity within himself and to give it true service. That service is to keep it uncontaminated by passion, triviality, or discontent at what is dealt by gods or men. What comes from the gods demands reverence for their goodness. What comes from men is welcome for our kinship's sake, but sometimes pitiable also in a way, because of their ignorance of good and evil: and this is no less a disability than that which removes the distinction of light and dark.

BOOK 2 -12

How all things quickly vanish, our bodies themselves lost in the physical world, the memories of them lost in time; the nature of all objects of the senses - especially those which allure us with pleasure, frighten us with pain, or enjoy the applause of vanity - how cheap they are, how contemptible, shoddy, perishable, and dead: these matters for our intellectual faculty to consider. And further considerations. What are they, these people whose judgements and voices confer or deny esteem? What is death? Someone looking at death per se, and applying the analytical power of his mind to divest death of its associated images, will conclude then that it is nothing more that a function of nature - and if anyone is frightened of a function of nature, he is a mere child. And death is not only a function of nature, but also to her benefit.

BOOK 2 -11

You may leave this life at any moment: have this possibility in your mind in all that you do or say or think. Now, departure from the world of men is nothing to fear, if gods exist: because they would not involve you in any harm. If they do not exist, or if they have no care for humankind, then what is life to me in a world devoid of gods, or devoid of providence? But they do exist, and they do care for humankind: and they have put it absolutely in man's power to avoid falling into the true kinds of harm. If there were anything harmful in the rest of experience, they would have provided for that too, to make it in everyone's power to avoid falling into it; and if something cannot make a human being worse, how could it make his life a worse life?

BOOK 2 -10

In his comparative ranking of sins, applying philosophy to the common man's distinctions, Theosphrastus  says that offenses of lust are graver than those of anger: because it is clearly some sort of pain and involuntary spasm which drives the angry man to abandon reason, whereas the lust-lead offender has given in to pleasure and seems somehow more abandoned and less manly in his wrongdoing. Rightly, then, and like a true philosopher, Theosphrastus said that greater censure attaches to an offence committed under the influence of pleasure than to one under the influence of pain. And in general the one is more like an injured party, forced to anger by the pain of provocation: whereas the other is his own source of the impulse to wrong, driven to what he does by lust.

BOOK 2 -9

Always remember these things: what the nature of the Whole is, what my own nature is, the relation of this nature to that, what kind of a part it is of what kind of Whole; and that there is no one who can prevent you keeping all that you say and do in accordance with that nature, of which you are a part.

BOOK 2 -8

Failure to read what is happening in another's soul is not easily seen as a cause of unhappiness: but those who fail to attend to the motions of their own souls are necessarily unhappy.

BOOK 2 -7

Do externals tend to distract you? Then give yourself the space to learn some further  good lesson, and stop your wandering. That done, you must guard against the other sort of drift. Those who are dead to life and have no aim for the direction of every impulse and, more widely, every thought are drivelers in deed as well as word.

BOOK 2 -6

Self-harm, my soul, you are doing self-harm: and you will have no more opportunity for self-respect. Life for each of us is a mere moment, and this life of yours is nearly over, while you still show no honour, but let your own welfare depend on other people's souls.

BOOK 2 -5

Every hour of the day give vigorous attention, as a Roman and as a man, to the performance  of the task in hand with precise analysis, with human sympathy, with dispassionate justice - and to vacating your mind from all its other thoughts. And you will achieve this vacation if you perform each action as if it were the last of your life: freed,  that is, from all lack of aim, from all passion-led deviation from the ordinance of reason, from love of self, from dissatisfaction with what fate has dealt you. You see how few things a man needs to master for the settled flow of a god-fearing life. The gods themselves ask nothing more of one who keeps these observances.

BOOK 2 -4

Remember how long you have been putting this off, how many times you have been given a period of grace by the gods and not used it. It is high time now for you to understand the universe of which you are a part, and the governor of that universe of whom you constitute an emanation: and that there is a limit circumscribed to your time - if you do not use it to clear away your clouds, it will be gone, and you will be gone, and the opportunity will not return.

BOOK 2 -3

The work of the gods are full of providence. The works of Fortune are not independent of Nature or the spinning and weaving together of the threads governed by Providence. All things flow from that world: and further factors are necessity and the benefit of the whole universe, of which you are a part. Now every part of nature benefits from that which is brought by the nature of the Whole and all which preserves that nature: and the order of the universe is preserved equally by the changes in the elements and the changes in their compounds. Let this be enough for you, and your constant doctrine. And give up your thirst for books, so that you do not die a grouch, but in true and heartfelt gratitude to the gods

BOOK 2 -2

Whatever it is, this being of mine is made up of flesh, breath, and directing mind. Now the flesh should disdain - blood, bones, a mere fabric and network of nerves, veins, and arteries. Consider too what breath is: wind - and not even a constant, but all the time being disgorged and sucked in again. That leaves the third part, the directing mind. No, think like this, as if you were on the point of death: 'you are old; don't then let this directing mind of yours be enslaved any longer - no more jerking to the strings of selfish impulse, no more disquiet at your present or suspicion of your future fate.

BOOK 2 -1

(written among the Quadi on the River Gran)

Say to yourself first thing in the morning: today I shall meet people who are meddling, ungrateful, aggressive, treacherous, malicious, unsocial. All this has afflicted them through their ignorance of true good and evil. But I had seen that the nature of good is what is right, and the nature of evil what is wrong and I have reflected that the nature of the offender himself is akin to my own - not a kinship of blood or seed, but a sharing in the same mind, the same fragment of divinity. Therefore I cannot be harmed by any of them, as none will infect me with their wrong. Nor can I be angry with my kinsman or hate them. We are born for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of upper and lower teeth. So to work in opposition to one another is against nature: and anger or rejection is opposition.

BOOK 1 -17-8

That whenever I wanted to help someone or some other need I was told that there was no source of affordable money: and that I myself never fell into similar want of financial assistance form another. That my wife is as she is, so submissive, loving, and unaffected: and that I found no lack of suitable tutors for my children.

That I was given help through dreams, especially how to avoid spitting blood and bouts of dizziness: and the response of the oracle at Caieta, 'just as you use yourself'. That, for all my love of philosophy, I did not fall in with any sophist, or devote my time to the analysis of literature or logic, or busy myself with cosmic speculation. All these things need 'the help of gods and Fortunes's favour.

BOOK 1 - 17-6

That I acquired  a clear and constant picture of what is meant by the life according to nature, so that, with regard to the gods, their communication from that world, their help and their inspiration, nothing now prevents me living the life of nature: my falling somewhat short, still, is due to my own fault and my failure to observe the promptings, not to say the instructions, of the gods.

That my body has held out so far in a life such as mine. That I never touched Bendicta or Theodotus, and that later experience of sexual passion left me cured. That, though I was often angry with Rusticus, my behavior never went to the point of regret. That my mother, fated to die young, nonetheless lived her last years with me.