BOOK 11 - 18-7

Seventh. It is not their actions which trouble us - because these lie in their own directing minds - but our judgements of the. Well, remove these judgements, make up your mind to dismiss your assessment of some supposed outrage, and your anger is gone. And how to remove them? By reflecting that no moral harm is caused you. If moral harm were not were not the only true harm, it would necessarily follow that you yourself are guilty of causing much harm, and become a robber, a rogue!

BOOK 11 -18-6

Sixth. When you are high in indignation and perhaps losing patience, remember that human life is a mere fragment of time and shortly we are all in our graves.  

BOOK 11 -18-5

Fifth. You are not even sure that they are doing wrong. Many things are done as a part of a larger plan, and generally one needs to know a great deal before one can pronounce with certainty on another's action.

BOOK 11 -18-4

Fourth. You yourself have many faults which are no different from them. If you do refrain from some wrongs you still have the proclivity to them, even if your restraint from wrongs like theirs is due to the fear or pursuit of public opinion, or some other such poor motive.

BOOK 11 -18-3

Third. If what they do is right, no cause for complaint. If wrong, this is clearly out of ignorance and not their wish. Just as no soul likes to be robbed of truth, so no soul wants to abandon the proper treatment of each individual as his worth deserves. At any rate these people resent the imputation of injustice, cruelty, selfishness - in a word, crimes against their neighbors.

BOOK 11 -18-2

Second. What sort of people they are at the table, in bed and so on. Most of all, what sort of behavior their opinions impose on them, and their complacent pride in acting as they do.

BOOK 11 -18

First, How do I regard my relation to them, and the fact that we were all born for each other: and, turning the argument, that I was born to be their leader, as the ram leads his flock and the bull his herd? But start from first principles. If not atoms, then nature governing all: if so, then the lower in the interests of the higher, and the higher for each other.

BOOK 11 -17

With each object of experience consider its origin, its constitution, what it is changing into, what it will be when changed and that no harm will come to it.

BOOK 11 -16

Live through life the best way you can. The power to do so is in a man's own soul, if he is indifferent to things indifferent. And he will be indifferent if he looks at these things both as a whole and analyzed into their parts, and remembers that none of them imposes a judgement of itself or forces itself on us. The things themselves are inert; it is we who procreate judgements about them and, as it were, imprint them on our minds - but there is no need  for imprinting at all, and any accidental print can be immediately erased. Remember too that our attention to these things can only last a little while, and then life will be at an end. And what, anyway, welcome them look for what accords with your own nature and go straight for that, even if it brings you no glory. Anyone can be forgiven for seeking his own proper good.

BOOK 11 - 14

The rotten pretense of the man who says, 'I prefer to be honest with you'! What are you on about, man? No need for this preface - the reality will show. It should be written on your forehead, immediately  clear in the tone of your voice and the light of your eyes, just as the loved one can immediately read all in the glance of his lovers. In short, the good and honest man should have the aura, willy-nilly, at once. Calculated honesty is a stiletto. There is nothing more degrading than the friendship of wolves: avoid that above all. The good, honest, kindly man has it in his eyes, and you cannot mistake him.

BOOK 11 -14

They despise each other, but still toady say: they want to win, but still grovel.

BOOK 11 -13

Someone despises me? That is not my concern. But I will see to it that I am not found guilty of any word or action deserving contempt. Will he hate me? That is his concern. But I will be kind and well-intentioned to all, and ready to show this very person what he is failing to see - not in any critiscm or display of intolerance, but with genuine good will, like the famous Phocian (if, that is, he was not speaking ironically). This should be the quality of our inner thoughts, which are open to the gods' eyes: they should see a man not disposed to any complaint and free of self-pity. And what harm can you suffer, if you yourself at this present moment are acting in kind with your own nature and accepting what suits the present purpose of universal nature - a man at full stretch for the achievement, this way or that, of the common good?

BOOK 11 -12

The soul is a sphere which retains the integrity of its own form if it does not bulge or contract for anything, does not flare or subside, but keeps the constant light by which it sees the truth of all things and the truth in itself.

BOOK 11 -11

The external things whose pursuit or avoidance troubles you do not force themselves on you, but in a way you yourself go out to them. However that may be, keep your judgement of them calm and they too will stay still - then you will not be seen to pursue or to avoid. 

BOOK 11 - 10

'No nature is inferior to art': in fact the arts imitate the variety of natures. If that is so, then the most perfect and comprehensive of all natures could not be surpassed by any artistic invention. Now all arts create the lower in the interests of the higher: so this is the way of universal nature too. And indeed here is the origin of justice, from which all other virtues take their being, since there will be no preservation of justice if we are concerned with indifferent things, or gullible and quick to chop and change.

BOOK 11 -9

Just as those who try to block your progress along the straight path of reason will not be able to divert you from principled action, so you must not let them knock you out of your good will towards them. Rather you should watch yourself equally on both fronts, keeping not only a stability of judgement and action but also a mild response to those who try to stop you and are otherwise disaffected. To be angry with them is no less a weakness than to abandon your course of action and capitulate in panic. Both amount equally to desertion of duty - either being frightened into retreat, or setting yourself at odds with your natural kinsmen and friends.

BOOK 11 -8

A branch cut from its neighboring branch is necessarily cut away from the whole tree. In the same way a human being severed from just one other human has dropped from the whole community. Now the branch is cut off by someone else, but a man separates himself from his neighbor by his own hatred or rejection, not realizing that he has thereby severed himself from the wider society of fellow citizens. Only there is this gift we have from Zeus who brought together the human community: we can grow back again to our neighbor and resume our place in the complement of the whole. Too often repeated, though, such separation makes it harder to unite and restore the divided part. In sum, the branch which stays with the tree from the  beginning of its growth and shares its transpiration is not the same as the branch which is cut off and then redrafted, whatever the gardeners say.

Share their stock, but not the their doctrines.

BOOK 11 -7

How clearly it strikes you that there is no other walk of life so conductive to the exercise of philosophy as this in which you now find yourself!

BOOK 11 -6

First, tragedies ere brought on stage to remind you of what can happen, that these happenings are determined by nature, and that what moves you in the theatre  should not burden you on the larger stage of life. You can see the way things must turn out and that even those who cry 'Oh Cithaeron!' must bear them. There are some useful sayings too in the tragedians. A prime example is:

   'If I and my two sons are now no more.

The gods' concern, this too will have its           cause.

Again: 'Mere things, brute facts, should not provoke your rage.' And: 'Ripe ears of corn are reaped, and so are our lives.'
And many others like that.