BOOK 10 -31-2

And what material situation, what role are you seeking to escape? What is all this other than an exercise for that resin which has looked at all of life with close and scientific inquiry? Stay on, then, until you have assimilated all this too, just as a strong stomach assimilates all food, or a bright fire turns all that you throw on it into flame and light.

BOOK 10 -31

When you see Satyrion or Eutyches or Hymen, picture them in Socrates' circle; when you see Eutychion or Silvanus, picture Euphrates; when you see Tropaeophorus, picture Alciphron; when you see Severus, picture Crito or Xenophon; and when you look at yourself, picture one of the Caesars - for each, then a parallel in the past. Then let this further thought strike you: Where are those men now? Nowhere, or wherever. In this way you will always look on human life as mere smoke and nothing, especially if you remind yourself also that what has changed will be no more for the infinity of time. Why then this stress? Why not be content with an orderly passage through the brief span you have?

BOOK 10 -30

Whenever you take offense at the wrong done another, move on at once to consider what similar wrong you are committing - it could be setting value on money, or pleasure, or reputation, and so on through the categories. This reflection will quickly damp your anger, aided by the further thought that the man is acting under compulsion - what else can he do? Or, if you can, remove the cause of his compulsion.

BOOK 10 -29

Consider each individual thing you do and ask yourself whether to lose it through death makes death itself any cause for fear.

BOOK 10 -28

Picture everyone voicing pain or discontent at anything, as like a pig at a sacrifice, kicking and squealing. Just the same is the man who keeps  it to himself, silently resentful on his bed. Think of all the threads that bind us, and how only rational creatures are given the choice of submitting willingly to events: pure submission is forced on all.

BOOK 10 -27

Constantly reflect that all the things which happen now have happened before: reflect too that they will happen again in the future. Have in your mind's eye whole drama's with similar settings, all that you know of from your own experience or earlier history - for example, the whole court of Hadrian, the whole court of Antoninus, the whole court of Philip, Alexander, Croesus. All the same as now: just different cast.

BOOK 10 -26

A man deposits his sperm in a womb and goes away. Thereafter another cause takes over, does its work, and produces a baby. What a result from a beginning! Then again. The child takes food down its throat, and now another causal sequence takes over, creating sensation and impulse, the whole of life and strength, and all manner of other wonderful things.

Look, then, at what happens in such mystery, and see the power at work, just as we see the force which weighs things down or carries them up - not with our eyes, but no less clearly.

BOOK 10 -25

A slave running from his master is a fugitive. Law is our master; the law-breaker is therefore a fugitive. But also in the same way pain, anger, or fear denote refusal of some past, present, or future order from the governor of all things - and this is law, which legislates his lot for each of us. To feel fear, then, pain or anger is to be a fugitive.

BOOK 10 -24

What is my directing to me? What am I turning it into now, what use am I making of it? Is it drained of intelligence? Is it divorced and broken off from society? It is interfused and welded to the flesh that it sways with tides?

BOOK 10 -23

Always have clear in your mind that 'the grass is not greener' elsewhere, and how everything is the same here as on top of a mountain, or on the seashore, or wherever you will. Plato's words you will find directly apposite: 'walling himself a fold on a mountain, and milking his flock when they bleat'.

BOOK 10 -22

Either you live on here, used to it now; or you retire, your own decision to leave; or you die, your service done. No other  choice. Be cheerful, then.

BOOK 10 -21

'Earth loves rain, the proud sky loves to give it.' The whole world loves to create futurity. I say then to the world, 'I share your love.' Is this not the source of the phrase, 'Thi s loves to happen'?

BOOK 10 -20

What universal nature brings to each is brought to his benefit. The benefit stands at the time of its bringing.

BOOK 10 -19

What sort of people are they when eating, sleeping, coupling, shitting, etc? Then what are they like when given power over men? Haughty, quick to anger, punishing to excess. And yet just now they were slaves to all those needs for all those reasons: and shortly they will be slaves again.

BOOK 10 -18

Consider any existing object and reflect that it is even now in the process of dissolution and change, in a sense regenerating through defy or dispersal: in other words, to what sort of 'death' each thing is born.

BOOK 10 -17

Keep constantly in your mind an impression of the whole of time and the whole of existence - and the thought that each individual thing is, on the scale of existence, a mere fig-seed; on the scale of time, one turn of a drill.

BOOK 10 -16

No more roundabout discussions of what makes a good man. Be one!

BOOK 10 -15

The time is short. Live it as if you were on a mountain. Here or there makes no difference, if wherever you live you take the world as your city. Let men see. let them observe a true man living in accordance with nature. If they cannot bear him, let them kill him - a better fate than a life like theirs.

Book 10 -14

Nature gives all and takes all back. To her the man educated into humility says: 'Give what you will; take back what you will.' And he says this in no spirit of defiance, but simply as her loyal subject.

Book 10 -13

As soon as you wake from sleep ask yourself: 'Will it make any difference to you if other criticize what is in fact just and true?' No, it will not. You have surely not forgotten what these people who whinny in praise or blame of others are like in their bed and at their board, the sort of things they do and avoid or pursue, their cheating and stealing, not with hands and feet but with the most precious part of themselves, the part where - if allowed - there grows trust, decency, truth, law, the spirit of goodness.

BOOK 10 -12

What need of prompt or hint when it is open to yourself to discern what needs to be done - and, if you can see your way, to follow it with kind but undeviating intent. If you cannot see the way, hold back and consult your best advisors. if some other factors obstruct this advice, proceed on your present resources, but with cautious deliberations, keeping always to what seems just. Justice is the best aim, as any failure is in fact a failure of justice.

A man following reason in all things combines relaxation with initiative, spark with composure.

BOOK 10 - 11

Adopt a systematic study of the way all things change into one another: pay constant attention to this aspect of nature and train yourself in it. Nothing is so conductive to greatness of mind. One so trained has divested himself of his body: recognizing that in almost no time he will have to leave all this behind and depart from the world of men, he has devoted his entire self to justice in his own actions and to the nature of the Whole in all things external. He does not even give a thought to what others will say or suppose about him, or do against him, but is content to meet these two conditions - his own integrity in each present action, and glad acceptance of his present lot. He has a banded all other preoccupations and ambitions, and his only desire is to walk the straight path according to law and, in so doing, to follow in the path of god.