BOOK 12 -35

For one whose god is what comes in its own proper season, who is equally content with a greater or lesser opportunity to express true reason in his actions, to whom it makes no difference whether he looks on this world for a longer or shorter time - for him even death has no terrors. 

BOOK 12 -34

The clearest call to think nothing of death is the fact that even those who regard pleasure as a good and pain as an evil have nevertheless thought nothing of death.

BOOK 12 -33

How does your directing mind employ itself? This is the whole issue. All else, of your own choice or not, is just corpse and smoke.

BOOK 12 -32

What a tiny part  of the boundless abyss of time has been allowed to each of us - and this is soon vanished in eternity; what a tiny part of the universal substance and the universal soul; how tiny in the whole earth the mere clod on which you creep. Reflecting on all this, think nothing important other than active pursuit where your own nature leads and passive acceptance of what universal nature brings.

BOOK 12 -31

What more do you want? To live on? Or is it to continue sensation and impulse? To wax and then to wane? To make use of your voice, your mind? What in all this strikes you as good cause for regret? But if every one of these objects is contemptible, go on then to the final aim, which is to follow reason and to follow god. To value these other things, to fret at their loss which death will bring, militates against this aim.

BOOK 12 - 30-2

Now in all the above the other parts - such as mere breath, or that material which is insensate - have no direct affinity to each other: yet even here a link is formed by a sort of unity and the gravitation of like to like. But the mind has this unique property: it reaches out to others of its own kind and joins with them, so the feeling of fellowship is not broken.

BOOK 12 - 30

One light of the sun, even though its path is broken by walls, mountains, innumerable other obstacles. One common substance, even though it is broken up into innumerable forms of individual bodies. One animate soul, even though it is broken up into innumerable species with specific individualities. One intelligent soul, even though it appears divided. 

BOOK 12 -29

The salvation of life lies in seeing each object in its essence and its entirety, discerning both the material and the casual: in applying one's whole soul to doing right and speaking the truth. There remains only the enjoyment of living a linked succession of good deeds, with not the slightest gap between them.

BOOK 12 -28

To those I ask, "Where then have you seen the gods? What conviction of their existence leads you to this worship of them?,  I reply first that they are in fact visible to our eyes. Secondly, and notwithstanding, that I have not seen my own soul either, and yet I honor it. So it is with gods too: from my every experience of their power time after time I am certain that they exist and I revere them.

BOOK 12 -27

Continually review in your mind those with whom a particular anger took to extremes, those who reached the greatest heights of glory or disaster or enmity or any other sort of fortune. Then stop and think: Where is it all now? Smoke and ashes, a story told or even a story forgotten. At the same time this whole class of examples should occur to you: Fabus Catullinus in his country house, Lusius Lupus in his town gardens, Stertinius at Baiae, Tiberius in Capri, Velius Rufus - and generally any obsession combined with self-conceit. Think how worthless all this striving is: how much wiser to use the material given you to make yourself in all simplicity just, self-controlled, obedient to the gods. Pride that prides itself on freedom from pride is the hardest of all to be.

BOOK 12 -26 -2

And have you forgotten this too, that every man's mind is god and has flowed from that source; that nothing is our property, but even our child, our body, our very soul have come from that source; that all is as thinking makes it do; that each of us lives only the present moment, and the present moment is all we lose.

BOOK 12 - 26

When you fret at any circumstance, you have forgotten a number of things. You have forgotten that all that comes about in accordance with the nature of the Whole; that any any wrong done lies with the other; further, that everything which happens was always so in the past, will be the same again in the future, and is happening now across the world; that a human being has close kinship with the whole human race -not a bond or blood or seed, but a community of mind.

BOOK 12 -25

Jettison the judgement, and you are saved. And who is there to prevent this jettison?

BOOK 12 -24

Three thoughts  to keep at hand. First, in your own actions, nothing aimless or other than Justice herself would have done; in external happenings either chance or providence is at work, and one should not blame chance or dict providence. Second: the nature of each of us from conception to the first breath of soul, and from that first breath to the surrender of our soul; what elements form our constitution and will be the result of our dissolution. Third: that if you were suddenly lifted up to a great height and could look down on human activity and see all its variety, you would despise it because your view would take in also the great surrounding host of spirits who populate the air and the sky; and that however many times you were lifted up, you would see the same things - monotony and transience. Such are the objects of our conceit.

BOOK 12 -23 -2

Now anything which benefits the Whole is fine and ripe. It follows that for each of us there is certainly no harm in the cessation  of life, as there is no shame either. - not self-chosen, not damaging to the common interest. Rather there is good, in that it falls in due season for the Whole, thereby both giving and receiving benefit. Thus too a man walks with god's support when his choice and his direction carry him along god's own path. 

BOOK 12 -23

Any one individual activity which comes to an end at the appropriate time suffers no harm from its cessation: nor has the agent suffered any harm simply because this particular action has ceased. In the same way,  then, if the total of all his actions which constitutes a man's life comes to an end at the appropriate time,  it suffers no harm from the mere fact of cessation: nor is the agent who brings this series of actions to a timely end exposed to any harm. The time and the term are assigned by nature -sometimes man's own nature, as in old age, but in any case by the nature of the Whole, which through the constant changing of its constituent parts keeps the while world ever young and fresh.

BOOK 12 -22

That all is as thinking makes it so - and you control your thinking. So remove your judgements whenever you wish and then there is calm - as the sailor rounding the cape finds smooth water and the welcome of the waveless bay.