BOOK 12 -1

All that you pray to reach at some point in the circuit of your life can be yours now if you are generous to yourself. That is, if you leave all the past behind, entrust the future to Providence, and direct the present solely to reverence and justice. To reverence, so that you come to love your given lot: it was Nature that brought it to you and you to it. To justice, so that you are open and direct in word and action, speaking the truth, observing law and proposition in all you do. You should let nothing stand in your way; not the inequity of others, not what anyone else thinks or says, still less any sensation of this poor flesh tag has accreted round you: the afflicted part must see to its own concern.

BOOK 11 -39

Socrates used to question thus. 'What do you want to have? The souls of rational or irrational beings?' 'What sort of rational beings?

The pure or the lower?'

'The pure.' 

'Why then don't you aim for that?'

'Because we have to.'

'Why then your fighting and disagreements?'

BOOK 11 -38

Again, 'So this is not a contest for a trivial prize: at issue is madness or sanity.'

BOOK 11 -37

Another saying of his. 'We must discover an art of assess, and in the whole field of our impulses take care to ensure that each impulse is conditional, has a social purpose, and is proportionate to the value of his goal. We must keep absolutely clear of personal motivation, and at the same time show no disinclination to anything outside immediate control.

BOOK 11 -36

'No thief can steal your will' - so Epicetus

BOOK 11 -35

Grapes, unripened, raisined: all changes, not into non-existence, but into not yet existence.

BOOK 11 -34

Epictetus used to say that when you kiss your child you should say to yourself: 'Tomorrow you may be dead.' But these are ominous words! 'No,' he replies, 'nothing is ominous which points to a natural process. Otherwise it would be ominous to speak of the corn being reaped.'

BOOK 11- 33

Only a madmen looks for figs in winter: just as mad to hope for a child when the time of this gift is past.

BOOK 11 -32

'They will pour scorn on virtue and sting with their abuse.'

BOOK 11 -31

'And the heart within me laughed'

BOOK 11 -30

'You were born a slave: you have no voice.'

BOOK 11 -29

In writing and reading you must learn before you can teach. Yet more so in life.

BOOK 11 -28

Think of Socrates in his in his underclothes when Xanthippe had gone out with his coat: and what he said to his friends retiring in embarrassment when they saw the state of his dress.

BOOK 11 -27

The Pythagoreans say, 'Look at the sky at dawn' - to remind our selves of the constancy of those heavenly bodies, their perpetual round of their own duty, their order, their purity, and their nakedness.  No star wears a veil.

BOOK 11 -26

In Epicurean writings there is laid down the precept that one should continually keep in mind one of those who followed the path of virtue in earlier times.

BOOK 11 -25

Socrates to Perdiccas of Macedon, declining the invitation to visit him: 'to avoid dying the worst of deaths' - that is, the inability to return in kind benefits received.

BOOK 11 -24

At their festivals the Spartans would put seats for visitors in the shade, and sit themselves wherever they could.

BOOK 11 -23

Socrates used to call the popular beliefs 'bogies', things to frighten children with.

BOOK 11 -21

'The man without one and the same aim in life cannot himself stay one and the same throughout his life.' The maxim is incomplete  unless you add what sort of aim that should be. Judgements vary of the whole range of various things taken by the majority to be goods in one way or another, but only one category commands a universal judgement, and that is the good of the community. It follows that the aim should set ourselves is a social aim, the benefit of our fellow citizens. A man directing all his own impulses to this end will be consistent in all his actions, and therefore the same man throughout.

BOOK 11 -20-2

So it is not strange that it is only your intelligent part which rebels and complains of the place given it? And yet there is nothing forced on it, only what accords with its own nature. But still it refuses to comply, and sets off in the opposite direction. Any movement towards acts of injustice or self-indulgence, to anger, to pain, or fear is nothing less than apostasy from nature. Further, whenever the directing mind feels resentment at any happening, that too is desertion of its proper post. It was constituted not only for justice to men but no less for the reverence and service of god - this also a form of fellowship, perhaps yet more important than the operation of justice.

BOOK 11 -20

All the elements of air and fire that are mingled in you have a natural tendency to rise, but nevertheless obey the dispensation of the Whole and are kept waiting here in the compound of the body. And all the elements of earth and water in you, whose tendency is to sink down, are nevertheless raised up and stay in a position unnatural to them. So even the elements are obedient to the Whole: assigned their place, they are forced to stay there, until the signal authorizing their dissolution once more is given from that same source.

BOOK 11 -19

There are four particular corruptions of the directing mind for which you must keep constant watch, and eliminate them whenever you detect them, in each case applying one of these formulas: 'This mental image is superfluous'; 'This could weaken the bond of community'; 'This would not be yourself speaking' (to say what you do not feel should be regarded  as the height of contradiction). And the fourth case for self-reproaching is that in which the more divine part of you loses the contest and bows to the lower, mortal part, the body and its grossly pleasures.

BOOK 11 -18-11

Now, if you will, take a tenth gift from the Leader of the Muses - the thought that it is madness to expect bad men to do no wrong: that is asking for the impossible. But it is cruel tyranny to allow them such behavior to others while demanding that they do no wrong to you.

BOOK 11 -18-10

Keep these nine points in mind- take them as gifts from the Muses! - and begin at long last to be a human being, while life remains. You should avoid flattery as much as anger in your dealings with them: both are against the common good and lead to harm. In your fits of anger have this thought ready to mind, that there is nothing manly in being angry, but a gentle calm is both more human and therefore more virile. It is the gentle who have the strength, sinew, and courage - not the indulgent and complaining.  The closer to control of emotion, the  closer to power. Anger is as much a sign of weakness as is pain. Both have been wounded, and have surrendered.

BOOK 11 -18-9

Ninth. Kindness is invincible - if it is sincere, not fawning or pretense. What can the most aggressive man do to you if you continue to be kind to him? If, as opportunity arises, you gently admonish him and take your time to re-educate him at the very moment when he is trying to do you harm? 'No, son, we were born for other purposes than this. There is no way that I can be harmed, but you are harming yourself, son.' And show him delicately how things are, making the general point that bees do not act like this, or any other creatures of gregarious nature. But your advice must not be ironic or critical. It should be affectionate, with no hurt feelings, not a lecture or a demonstration to impress others, but the way you would talk to someone by himself irrespective of company.

BOOK 11 -18-8

Eighth. The greater grief comes from the consequent anger and pain, rather than the original causes of our anger pain.