BOOK 7 35

So, to a man endowed with noble intelligence and a vision of all time and all being, do you think this human life will seem of great importance? "Impossible," he said. So such a man will not think there is anything fearful in death either? "Certainly not."

BOOK 7 -34

On fame. Look at their minds, the nature of their thought and what they seek or avoid. And see how, just as drifting sands constantly overlay the previous sand, so in our lives what we once did is very quickly covered over by subsequent layers.

BOOK 7 -33

On pain. Unbearable pain carries us off: chronic pain can be borne. The mind preserves its own serenity by withdrawal, and the directing reason is not impaired by pain. Its for the parts injured by the pain to protest if they can.

BOOK 7 -32

On death. Either dispersal, if we are atoms: or, if we are a unity, extinction or a change of home.

BOOK 7 -31

Take your joy in simplicity, in integrity, in indifference to all that lies between virtue and vice. Love mankind. Follow god. Democritus says, 'All else is subject to the law of convention: only the elements are absolute and real', but enough for you to remember that all is subject to law. Precepts reduced to very few.

BOOK 7 -30

Stretch your thought to parallel what is being said. Let your mind get inside what is happening and who is doing it.

BOOK 7 -29

Erase the point of imagination. Stop the puppet-strings of impulse. Define the present moment of time. Recognize what happens to you or to another. Analyse and divide the event into the causal and the material. Think of your final hour. leave the wrong done by another where it started.

BOOK 7 -28

Withdraw into yourself. It is in the nature of he rational directing mind to be self-content with acting rightly and the calm it thereby enjoys.

BOOK 7 -27

Do not dream of possession of what you do not have: rather reflect on the greatest blessings in what you do have, and on their account remind yourself how much they would have been missed if they were not there. But at the same time you must be careful not to let your pleasure in them habituate you to dependency, to avoid distress if they are sometimes absent.

BOOK 7 -26

When someone does you some wrong, you should consider immediately what judgement of good or evil led him to wrong you. When you see this, you will pity him, and feel surprise or anger. You yourself either still share his view of good, or something like it, in which case you should understand and forgive: if, on the other hand, you no longer judge such things as either good or evil, it will be easier for you to be patient with the unsighted.

BOOK 7 -25

All that you see will in a moment be changed by the nature which governs the Whole: it will create other things out of this material, and again others out of that, so that the world is ever young.

BOOK 7 -24

A deep scowl on the face is contrary to nature, and when it becomes habitual expressiveness begins to die or is even finally extinguished beyond rekindling. Try to attend to this very point, that this is something against reason. In the field of moral behavior, if even the consciousness of doing wrong is lost, what reason is there left for living?

BOOK 7 -23

Universal nature uses the substance of the universe like wax, machining now the model of a horse, then melting it down and using its material for a tree, next for a man; next for something else. Each one of these subsists for only the briefest time. It is no more hardship for a box to be broken up than to be put together.

BOOK 7 -22

It is human nature to love even those who trip and fall. This follows if you reflect at the time all men are brothers; that they go wrong through ignorance, not intent; that in a short while both you and they will be dead; and, above all, that the man has not harmed you - he has not made your directing mind worse than it was before.

BOOK 7 -21

Soon you will have forgotten all things: soon all things will have forgotten you.

BOOK 7 -20

I have only one anxiety: that I myself should not do something which the human constitution does not intend - or does not intend in this way or at this time.

BOOK 7 -19

All our bodies (being of one nature with the Whole and cooperating with it as our limbs do with each other) pass through the universal substance as through a swirling stream. How many Chrysippus, a Socrates, an Epictetus has eternity already swallowed! This same thought should strike you about any man at all and any thing.

BOOK 7 -18

If someone is afraid of change? Well, what can ever come to be without change? Or what is dearer or closer to the nature of the Whole than change? Can you yourself take your bath, if the wood that heats it is not changed? Can you be fed, unless what you eat changes? Can any other of the benefits of life be achieved without change? Do you not see then that for you to be changed is equal, and equally necessary to the nature of the Whole?

BOOK 7 -17

Happiness is a benign god or divine blessing. Why then, my imagination, are you doing what you do? Go away, in the gods' name, the way you came: I have no need of you. You have come in your old habit. I am not angry with you. Only go away. 

BOOK 7 16

The directing mind does not disturb itself: for example, it does not frighten itself or lead itself to desire. If anyone else can frighten it or cause it pain, let hime do so: of itself, of its own judgement, it will not deliberately turn to such modes. The body should take care, as far as it can, to avoid harm; the sensual soul, which feels fear or pain, should say if it does so; but that which makes general assessment of all these things will not suffer at all - it will not itself rush to any such judgement. Of itself the directing mind is without needs, unless it creates a need for itself; in the same way it is untroubled and unhindered unless it troubles or hinders itself.

BOOK 7 -15

What anyone does or says, I must be a good man. It is as if an emerald, or gold or purple, were always saying: 'Whatever anyone does or says, I must be an emerald and keep my own colour'

BOOK 7 -14

Let any external thing that so wishes happen to those parts of me which can be affected by its happening - and they, if they wish, can complain.  I myself am not harmed, unless I judge this occurrence something bad: and I can refuse to do so. 

BOOK 7 -13

Rational beings collectively have the same relation as the various limbs of an organic unity - they were created for a single cooperative purpose. The notion of this will strike you more forcefully if you keep on saying to yourself: 'I am a limb of the composite body of rational beings.' If, though, by the change of one letter from l to r [melos to meros], you call yourself simply a part rather than a limb, you do not yet love your fellow men from the heart: doing good does not yet delight you as an end in itself: you are still doing it as mere duty, not yet as a kindness to yourself.

BOOK 7 -12

Standing straight - or held straight.

BOOK 7 -11

For a rational being, to act in accordance with nature is also to act in accordance with reason.

BOOK 7 -10

Everything material rapidly disappears in the universal substance; every cause is rapidly taken up into the universal reason; and the memory of everything buried in eternity.

BOOK 7 -9

All things are meshed together, and a sacred bond unites them. Hardly a single thing is alien to the rest: ordered together in their places they together make up the one order of the universe. There is one universe out of all things, one god pervading all things, one substance, one law, one common reason in all intelligent beings, and one truth - if indeed there is also one perfection of all cognate beings sharing in the same reason.

BOOK 7 -8

Do not let the future trouble you. You will come to to it (if that is what you must) possessed of the same reason that you apply now to the present.

BOOK 7 -7

Do not be ashamed of help. It is your task to achieve your assigned duty, like a soldier in a scaling party. What, then, if you are lame and cannot climb the parapet by yourself, but this is made possible by another's help?