BOOK 5 -3

Judge yourself entitled to any word or action which is in accord with nature, and do not let any subsequent criticism or persuasion from anyone talk you out of it. No, if it was a good thing to do or say, do not revoke your entitlement. Those others are guided by their own minds and pursue their own impulses. Do not be distracted by any of this, but continue straight ahead, following your own nature and universal nature: these two have one and the same path.

BOOK 5 -2

How easy it is to drive away or to obliterate from one's mind every impression which is troublesome or alien, and then to be immediately in perfect calm.

BOOK 5 -1-3

The point is that you do not love yourself - otherwise you would love both your own nature and her purpose for you. Other men love their own pursuit and absorb themselves in its performance to the exclusion of bath and food: but you have less regard for your own nature than the smith has for his metal-work, the dancer for his dancing, the money-grubber for his money, the exhibitionist for his little moment of fame. Yet these people, when impassioned, give up food and sleep for the promotion of their pursuits: and you think social action less important, les worthy of effort?

BOOK 5 -1

At break of day, when you are reluctant to get up, have this thought ready to mind: 'I am getting up for a man's work. Do I still then resent it, if I am going out to do what I was born for, the purpose for which I was brought into the world? Or was I created to wrap myself in blankets and keep warm?' 'But this is more pleasant.' Were you then born for pleasure - all for feeling, not for action? Can you not see plants , birds, ants, spiders, bees all doing their own work, each helping in their own way to order the world? And then you do not want to do the work of a human being - you do not hurry to the demands of your own nature. 'But one needs rest too.' One does indeed: I agree. but nature has set limits to this too, just as it has to eating and drinking, and yet you go beyond these limits, beyond what you need. Not in your actions, though, not any longer: here you stay below your capability.  

BOOK 4 -51

Always run on the short road: and nature's road is short. Go then for the healthiest in all you say and do. Such a purpose releases a man from the labors of service, from all need to manage or impress.

BOOK 4 - 50

An unphilosophic but nonetheless effective help to putting death in its place is to run over the list of those who have clung long to life. What did they gain over the untimely dead? At any rate they are all in their graves by now - Caedicianus, Fabius, Julianus, Lepidus, and all others like them who took part in funerals and then their own. In truth, the distance we have to to travel is small: and we drag it out with such labour, in such poor company, in such a feeble body. No great thing, then. Look behind you at the huge gulf of time, and another infinity ahead. In this perspective what is the difference between an infant of three days and a Nestor of three generations?

BOOK 4 -49

Be like the rocky headland on which waves constantly break. It stands firm, and round it the seething waters are laid to rest. 

'It is my bad luck that this has happened to me.' No, you should rather say: 'It is my good luck that, although this has happened to me, I can bear it without pain, neither crushed by the present nor fearful of the future.' Because such a thing could have happened to any man, but not every man could have borne it without pain. So why see more misfortune in the event than good fortune in your ability to bear it? Or in general would you call anything a misfortune for a man which is not a deviation from man's nature? Or anything a deviation from man's nature which is not contrary to the purpose of his nature? Well, then. You have learnt what that purpose is. Can there be anything, then, in this happening which prevents you being just, high-minded, self-controlled, intelligent, judicious, truthful, honorable and free - or any other of those attributes whose combination is the fulfillment of man's proper nature? So in all future events which might induce sadness remember to call on this principle: 'this is no misfortune, but to bear it true to yourself is good fortune.'

BOOK 4 -48

Think constantly how many doctors have died, after knitting their brows over their own patients, how many astrologers, after predicting the deaths of others, as if death were something important; how many philosophers, after endless deliberation on death or immortality; how many heroes, after the many others they killed; how many tyrants, after using their power over mens's lives with monstrous insolence, as if they themselves were immortal. Think too how many whole cities have 'died' - Helice, Pompeii, Herculaneum, innumerable others. Go over now all those you have known yourself, one after the other:  then another one man follows a friend's funeral and is then laid out himself, then another follows him - and all in a brief space of time. The conclusion of all this? You should always look on human life as short and cheap. Yesterday sperm: tomorrow a mummy or ashes.

So one should pass through this tiny fragment of time in tune with nature, and leave it gladly, as an olive might fall when ripe, blessing the earth which bore it and grateful to the tree which gave it growth.

BOOK 4 -47

Just as if a god told you that you would die tomorrow or at least the day after tomorrow, you would attach no importance to the difference of one day, unless you are a complete coward (such is the tiny gap of time): so you should think there no great difference between life to the umpteenth year and life to tomorrow.

BOOK 4 -46

Always remember Heraclitus: 'The death of earth is the birth of water; the death of water is the birth of air; the death of air is fire , and back again.' Remember too his image of the man who forgets his way home; his saying that men are at odds with their most constant companion, the Reason which governs all things; that their everyday experience takes them by surprise; that we must not act or speak as if asleep, and sleep brings the illusion  of speech and action; and that we should not be like children with their parents, simply accepting what we are told.

BOOK 4 -45

What comes after is always in affinity to what went before. Not some simple enumeration of disparate things and a merely necessary sequence, but a rational connection: and just as existing things are harmoniously interconnected, so the processes of becoming exhibit no mere succession, but a wonderfully inherent affinity.

BOOK 4 - 44

All that happens is as habitual and familiar as roses in spring and fruit in the summer. True, too, of disease, death, and defamation, and conspiracy - and all that delights or gives pain to fools.

BOOK 4 -43

There is a river of creation, and time is a violent stream As soon as one thing comes into sight, it is swept past and another is carried down: it too will be taken on its way.

BOOK 4 -42

Change: nothing inherently bad in the process, nothing inherently good in the result.

BOOK 4 -41

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

BOOK 4 -40

Think always of the universe as one living creature, comprising one substance and one soul: how all is absorbed into this one consciousness; how a single impulse governs all its actions; how all things collaborate in all that happens; the very web and mesh of it all.

BOOK 4 -39

Harm to you cannot subsist in another's directing mind, nor indeed in any turn or change of circumstance. Where, then? In that part of you which judge harm. So no such judgement, and all is well. Even if what is closet to it, your own body, is subjected to knife or cautery, or left to suppurate or mortify, even so that faculty in you which judges these things should stay untroubled. That is , it should assess nothing either bad or good which can happen equally to the bad man or good: because what can happen to a man irrespective of his life's conformity to nature is not of itself in accordance with nature or contrary to it.

BOOK 4 -38

Look into their directing minds: observe what even the wise will avoid or pursue.

BOOK 4 -37

Your death will soon be on you: and you are not yet clear-minded, or untroubled, or convinced that justice of action is the only wisdom.

BOOK 4 -36

Constantly observe all that comes through change, and habituate yourself to the thought that the nature of the Whole loves nothing so much as to change one form of existence into another, similar but new. All that exists is in a sense the seed of its successor: but your concept of 'seed' is simply what is put into the earth or the womb - that is very unphilosophic thinking.

BOOK 4 -35

All is ephemeral, both memory and the object of memory.

BOOK 4 -34

Gladly surrender yourself to Clotho: let her spin your thread into whatever web she wills.

BOOK 4 -33

Words in common use long ago are obsolete now. So too the names of those once famed are in a sense obsolete - Camillus, Caeso, Volesus, Dentatus; a little later Scipio and Cato, then Augustus too, then Hadrian and Antoninus. All things fade and quickly turn to myth: quickly too utter oblivion drowns them. And I am talking of those who shone with some wonderful brilliance: the rest, once they have breathed  their last, are immediately 'beyond knowledge'. But what in any case is everlasting memory? Utter emptiness.

So where should a man direct his endeavor? here only - a right mind, action for the common good, speech incapable of lies, a disposition to welcome all that happens as necessary, intelligible, flowing from an equally intelligible spring of origin.

BOOK 4 -32-2

Pass on again to the time of Trajan, Again, everything the same. That life too is dead.

Similarly, look at the histories of other eras and indeed whole nations, and see resolution into the elements. Above all, review in your mind those you have seen yourself in empty struggles, refusing to act in accord with their own natural constitution, to hold tight to it and find it sufficient. And in this context you must remember that there is proportionate value in our attention to each action - so you will not lose heart if you devote no more time than they warrant to matters of less importance.

BOOK 4 -32

Consider, for example, the time of Vespasian. You will see everything the same. People marrying, having children, falling ill, dying, fighting, feasting, trading, farming, flattering, pushing, suspecting, plotting, praying for the death of others, grumbling at their lot, falling in love, storing up wealth, longing of consulships and kingships. And now that life of theirs is gone, vanished.

BOOK 4 -31

Love the art which you have learnt, and take comfort in it. Go through the remainder of your life in sincere commitment of all your being to the gods, and never making yourself a tyrant or slave to any man.