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?

BOOK 7 -6

How many who once rose to fame are now consigned to oblivion: and how many who sang their fame are long disappeared.

BOOK 7 -5

Is my mind sufficient for this task, or is not? If it is, I use it for the task as an instrument given me by the nature of the Whole. If it is not, I either cede to the work (if it is otherwise my responsibility) someone better able to accomplish it, or do it best as I can, calling in aid someone who, in cooperation with my own directing mind, can achieve what is at this particular time the need and benefit of the community. Whatever I do, either by myself or with another, should have this sole focus - the common benefit and harmony.

BOOK 7 -4

In conversations one ought to follow closely what is said, in any impulse to follow closely what takes place. In the latter case, to see immediately the intended object of reference: in the former, to watch carefully what is meant.

BOOK 7 -3

The empty pomp of a procession, plays on the stage, flocks and herds, jousting shows, a bone thrown to puppies, tidbits into the fishpond, ants toiling and carrying, the scurries of frightened mice, puppets dancing on their strings. Well, amid all this you must keep yourself tolerant - do not snort at them. But bear in mind that a person's worth is measured by the worth of what he values.

BOOK 7 -2

Your principles are living things. How else could they be deadened, except by the extinction of the corresponding mental images?  And the constant rekindling of these is up to you. 'I am able to form the judgement I should about this event. If able, why troubled? All that lies outside my mind is nothing to it.'  Learn this, and you stand upright. You can live once more. Look at things again as you used to look at them: in this is the resumption of life. 

BOOK 7 -1

This is wickedness: this is what you have often seen.  And you should have this thought ready to hand against any eventuality: 'I have seen this often before.' Generally wherever you look you will find the same things. The histories - ancient, more recent, and modern - are full of them: cities and households are full of them today. There is nothing new. All is familiar, and all short-lived.

BOOK 6 -59

What sort of people they wish to please! And what kind of actions are the means to success! How quickly time will cover everything - and how much everything is covered already.

BOOK 6 -58

No one will prevent you from living in accordance with the principle of your own nature: nothing will happen to you contrary to the principle of universal nature.

BOOK 6 -57

Appearances: to the jaundiced honey seems bitter, to those bitten by rabid dogs water is terror, to little boys a ball is joy. Why then am I angry? Or do you think that false representation has less effect than bile in the jaundiced or poison in the hydrophobic?

BOOK 6 -56

How many with whom I came into the world have left!

BOOK 6 -55

If sailors spoke ill of their captains or patients ill of their doctors, who else would they listen to? Otherwise how would the captain achieve a safe voyage for the passengers or the doctor health for those in his care?

BOOK 6 -54

What does not benefit the hive does not benefit the bee either.

BOOK 6 -53

Accustom yourself not to be disregarding of what someone else has to to say: as far as possible enter into the mind of the speaker.

BOOK 6 -52

It is possible to have no understanding of this and not to be troubled in mind: things of themselves have no inherent power to form our judgements.

BOOK 6 -51

How to understand your own good: the lover of glory takes it to be the reactions of others; the lover of pleasure takes it to be his own passive experience; the intelligent man sees it as his own action.

BOOK 6 -50

Try to persuade them, but act even if they are unpersuaded, whether the principle of justice so directs. But if someone forcibly resists, change tack to an unhurt acceptance, so using the obstacle to bring forth a different virtue. And remember that if you set out on a conditional course - you were not aiming at the the impossible. So what were you aiming at? An impulse qualified by a condition. This you have achieved: what we proposed to ourselves has been accomplished.

BOOK 6 -48

Whenever you want to cheer yourself, think of the qualities of your fellows - the energy of one, for example, the decency of another, the generosity of a third, some other merits in a fourth. There is nothing so cheering as the stamp of virtues manifest in the character of colleagues - and the greater the collective incidence, the better. So keep them ready to hand.

BOOK 6 -47

Think constantly of all sorts of men, of various professions and of all nations on earth, who have died: and so bring your thought down to Philistion, Phoebus, and Origanion. Pass now to the other classes of men. We too are bound to change our abode to that other world, where there are so many skilled orators, so many distinguished philosophers - Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Socrates - so many heroes of old, so many later commanders and kings.

Add Eudoxus, Hipparchus, Achimedes; add other men of penetrating intellect, men of great vision, men dedicated to their work; add rogues, bigots, and even satirists of this transient mortal life, like Menippus and his kind. Reflect of all of these that they are long dead and buried. So, is this anything terrible for them - or indeed for men whose very names are lost? In this world there is only one thing of value, to live out your life in truth and justice, tolerant of those who are neither true nor just.

BOOK 6 -46

Just as the business of the amphitheater and such places offends you as always one and the same sight, and monotony of the spectacle bores you, so it is too with your experience of life as a whole: everything, up or down, is the same, with the same causes. How much longer, then?

BOOK 6 -45

All that happens to the individual is to the benefit of the Whole. So far, so clear. But if you look more closely you will also see as a general rule that what benefits one person benefits other people too - though here 'benefit' should be taken in its popular application to things which are in fact indifferent.

BOOK 6 -44-3

As Antoninus, my city and country is Rome: as a human being, it is the world. So what benefits these two cities is my only good.