Marcus Aurelius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
1. The ruling power within, when it is in accordance with nature, stands toward what happens in such a way that it always easily shifts to what is possible and given. For it is not devoted to any fixed material, but reaches for what it aims at with reservation, and makes whatever opposes it into material for itself, just as fire does when it gets the better of what is thrown onto it — the very things that would have put out a small lamp. But a blazing fire quickly makes its own whatever is heaped on it, consumes it, and rises higher from those very things.
2. Let no action be undertaken at random, or otherwise than in accordance with a principle that completes the art.
3. People look for retreats for themselves — country places, seashores, mountains — and you yourself are particularly used to longing for such things. But this is altogether the mark of an ordinary man, when it is possible for you, at whatever hour you wish, to withdraw into yourself. For nowhere does a man withdraw into more peace or freedom from trouble than into his own soul, especially if he has within himself the sort of thoughts that, by looking into them, at once bring him into complete ease. And by that ease I mean nothing beyond a well-ordered mind. Constantly, then, give yourself this retreat and renew yourself. Let the doctrines be brief and elementary, such as will suffice, as soon as you meet them, to wash away all your distress and send you back without resentment toward the things to which you return. For what will you resent? The wickedness of men? Reckoning up the judgment that rational creatures have come into being for one another's sake, that bearing with one another is part of justice, that men do wrong without meaning to, and how many already, having been enemies, suspicious, hateful, at each other's throats, now lie stretched out, turned to ashes — stop resenting, at some point. But will you resent the things allotted to you out of the whole? Renew for yourself that either-or: either providence or atoms, and all the arguments by which it has been shown that the universe is like a city. But will bodily things still lay hold of you?
Consider that the mind, once it has taken hold of itself and recognized its own power, does not mix itself in with the breath moving smoothly or roughly, and remember all you have heard and agreed to about pain and pleasure. But will petty reputation distract you? Look at how quickly all things are forgotten, at the chaos of the boundless age on either side of us, at the emptiness of applause, at the fickleness and lack of judgment in those who seem to praise, and at the narrowness of the place within which it is confined. For the whole earth is a mere point, and this dwelling of ours is what small corner of it? And here, how many are there, and of what sort, who will praise you? What remains, then, is to remember to withdraw into this little plot of ground that is yourself, and above all not to strain or stretch yourself out of shape, but to be free, and to view matters the way a man should, the way a human being should, the way a citizen should, the way a mortal creature should. Among the things most ready to hand for you to look into, let these two be present: one, that things do not touch the soul, but stand outside it, unmoving, and disturbances come only from the judgment within; the other, that all these things you see will change almost at once and will no longer exist — and keep constantly in mind how many changes you yourself have already witnessed. The universe is change; life is opinion.
4. If the intellect is common to us, and reason too, in virtue of which we are rational — if this is so, then reason that prescribes what is to be done or not is common; if this is so, law too is common; if this is so, we are citizens; if this is so, we share in some form of government; if this is so, then the cosmos itself amounts to a kind of city-state. For what other shared government could anyone claim embraces the whole human race? And it is from there, from this shared city, that our very intellect and reason and grasp of law are derived — from where else could they come? Just as the earthy portion in me was apportioned out of some quantity of earth, and the fluid portion out of a further element, and the breath-like portion out of its own wellspring, and the warm, fiery portion likewise drawn from a wellspring proper to it (since nothing arises out of nothing, just as nothing passes away into utter nonbeing), so too the intellect must come from somewhere.
5. Death is a thing like birth, a mystery of nature: a combination out of the same elements, a dissolution into the same. There is nothing here to feel disgraced by, since it runs counter neither to the order fitting a rational being nor to the logic of its own makeup.
6. These things are, by necessity, the nature of such causes to produce; and one who does not want this wants the fig tree to have no juice. In general, remember this: that in a very short time both you and he will be dead, and shortly after, not even your name will be left.
7. Take away the judgment, and 'I have been harmed' is taken away; take away 'I have been harmed,' and the harm is taken away.
8. Whatever does not make a man worse than himself, that also does not make his life worse, nor does it harm him, either from outside or from within.
9. The nature of what is advantageous has been compelled to do this.
10. 'Everything that happens, happens justly.' Watch carefully and you will find this so — I do not mean merely as following in sequence, but as in accordance with justice, as if apportioned by someone who assigns to each according to worth. So watch as you began, and whatever you do, do it together with this — together with being good, in the sense properly meant by 'good.' Keep this in every action.
11. Do not suppose things to be such as the one who insults you judges them, or as he wishes you to judge them, but see them as they truly are.
12. You must always have these two readinesses at hand: the one, to do only what the reason of kingship and lawgiving suggests for the benefit of mankind; the other, to change your course, if someone is present to correct and turn you from some opinion. Yet the change of course should always come from some persuasion that it is just or of common benefit, and what is set forth as such should be of that kind only — not because it seemed pleasant or brought reputation.
13. 'Do you have reason?' 'I have.' 'Why then do you not use it? For if this does its own work, what else do you want?'
14. You have subsisted as a part. You will vanish into that which begot you — or rather, you will be taken back up into its generative reason, by transformation.
15. Many grains of frankincense on the same altar: one falls first, another later, but it makes no difference.
16. Within ten days you will seem a god to those to whom you now seem a beast and an ape, if you turn back to your principles and the reverence of reason.
17. Do not act as though you were going to live ten thousand years. What is fated hangs over you. While you live, while it is still possible, become good.
18. How much leisure a man gains who does not look at what his neighbor has said or done or thought, but only at what he himself is doing, so that this very thing may be just and holy, or in accordance with the good — not looking around at a dark character, but running straight along the line, not scattered.
19. The one who is agitated about posthumous fame does not picture that each of those who remember him will himself also die very soon; and then in turn the one who succeeded him, until the whole memory is extinguished, passing on through people being kindled and being quenched in turn. But suppose that those who will remember are even immortal, and the memory immortal — what then is that to you? And I do not say it is nothing to the dead man, but as for the living, what good is praise — except perhaps for some practical purpose? For you are now setting aside, out of season, nature's own gift, clinging instead to some other line of reasoning.
20. Everything that is beautiful in any way is beautiful of itself and terminates in itself, not having praise as part of itself; at any rate, the thing praised becomes neither worse nor better. This I say also of things called beautiful in the more common sense, such as material objects and works of craft. For what real need has the truly beautiful? No more than law does, no more than truth, no more than goodwill or modesty. Which of these becomes beautiful because it is praised, or is corrupted because it is blamed? Does an emerald become worse than itself if it is not praised? What of gold, ivory, purple, a lyre, a small knife, a little flower, a little tree?
21. If souls persist, how does the air hold them from eternity? And how does the earth hold the bodies of those buried over so vast an age? Just as here, after some span of persisting, their change and dissolution makes room for other corpses, so too the souls that pass over into the air, after remaining for a time, change and are poured out and kindled, taken up into the generative reason of the whole, and in this way make room for those settling in alongside them. This is the answer one might give on the hypothesis that souls persist. But one should consider not only the multitude of bodies buried in this way, but also that of the animals eaten each day by us and by other animals. For consider the number consumed and in a sense buried this way, in the bodies of those they feed — and yet the world receives them, through their conversion into blood, through their alteration into the airy or the fiery. What is the true account of this matter? A division into the material and the causal.
22. Do not let yourself be swept off course, but at every impulse render what is just, and at every impression preserve the power of comprehension.
23. Everything suits me that is fitting for you, O universe. Nothing arrives ahead of schedule or overdue when it comes from you at its proper hour. Everything is fruit for me that your seasons bring, O nature. From you are all things, in you are all things, to you all things return. That man says, 'Dear city of Cecrops' — will you not say, 'Dear city of Zeus'?
24. 'Do little,' he says, 'if you mean to be cheerful.' Is it not better to do what is necessary, and whatever the reason of a creature naturally social chooses, and as it chooses? For this brings not only the cheerfulness that comes from acting well, but also that which comes from doing little. For if one cuts away most of what we say and do, since it is not necessary, one will be more at leisure and less troubled. Hence one must remind oneself at every turn: is this perhaps one of the unnecessary things? And one must cut away not only unnecessary actions but also unnecessary impressions; for then unneeded actions will not follow after them either.
25. Try how the life of the good man suits you too — one who is content with what is allotted from the whole, and satisfied with his own just action and benevolent disposition.
26. You have seen those things; look now at these too. Do not trouble yourself; make yourself simple. Someone does wrong? He does wrong to himself. Something has happened to you? Good — everything that happens was spun and fated for you from the beginning, out of the whole. In short, life is brief; one must profit from the present with good sense and justice. Be sober without straining.
27. Either an ordered universe or a jumbled confusion. But surely it is an ordered universe. Or could some order subsist in you while there is disorder in the whole? And that too when all things are so distinguished, yet interspersed, and in sympathy with one another.
28. A dark character, a womanish character, a stubborn character; bestial, brutish, childish, stupid, false, scurrilous, mercenary, tyrannical.
29. If he who does not recognize what exists in the universe is a stranger to the universe, no less a stranger is he who does not recognize what is happening in it. A fugitive is he who flees the reason that governs the community; blind is he who shuts the eye of the mind; a beggar is he who is in need of another and does not have from himself all that is useful for life; an abscess on the universe is he who withdraws and separates himself from the reason of common nature by being displeased with what happens — for the same nature that bore you bears this too; a severed limb from the city is he who cuts his own soul off from that of rational beings, which is one.
30. One philosophizes without a tunic, another without a book. Here's another, half-naked: 'I have no bread,' he says, 'yet I hold to reason.' — And I have no nourishment from my studies, yet I hold on.
31. Love the little craft you have learned, and rest content in it; and pass through the rest of life as one who has entrusted all that is his own to the gods with his whole soul, making himself neither tyrant nor slave to any man.
32. Call to mind, for instance, the times of Vespasian: you will see all the same things — people marrying, raising children, falling ill, dying, making war, feasting, trading, farming, flattering, being stubborn, suspecting, plotting, praying for some to die, grumbling at their present state, falling in love, hoarding wealth, longing for the consulship, for kingship — well, that life of theirs is now nowhere at all. Pass again to the times of Trajan: again all the same things; that life too has died. In the same way, review the other records of times and whole nations, and see how many, having strained themselves to the utmost, soon fell and were dissolved into their elements. Above all you must call to mind those you yourself have known, straining after empty things, having let go of doing what accorded with their own constitution and clinging to that and being satisfied with it. And here it is necessary to remember that one's attention to each action has its own worth and proportion; for in this way you will not lose heart, provided you do not spend more time than is fitting on lesser things.
33. Words once in common use are now obsolete; so too the names of men once greatly celebrated are now, in a way, obsolete words — Camillus, Caeso, Volesus, Dentatus, and before long Scipio and Cato too, then Augustus, then Hadrian and Antoninus. Everything fades and quickly turns into legend, and complete forgetfulness quickly buries it. And I say this of those who shone in some marvelous way; the rest, the moment they breathe their last, are "unseen, unheard of." And what, in any case, is being remembered forever? Utterly empty. So what is it that deserves our effort? This one thing: a just mind, actions for the common good, speech incapable of deceit, and a disposition that welcomes whatever happens as necessary, as familiar, as flowing from a source and origin of that same kind.
34. Give yourself over willingly to Clotho, letting her spin you into whatever affairs she pleases.
35. Everything is short-lived, both the one who remembers and the one remembered.
36. Watch continually how all things come to be through change, and accustom yourself to grasp that the nature of the whole loves nothing more than reshaping what currently exists into fresh forms that resemble it. Everything that exists is, in a sense, the seed of what will come from it — but you imagine seeds only as what is thrown into the earth or into a womb, which is far too simple-minded a view.
37. You will soon be dead, and still you are not simple, not untroubled, not free of suspicion that you might be harmed from outside, not gracious to everyone, not placing wisdom in doing what is right alone.
38. Look closely into their ruling faculties, even those of the wise, and see what they run from and what they pursue.
39. Your harm does not reside in another person's ruling faculty, nor indeed in any turn or alteration of what surrounds you. Where then? Where your own judgment about evils resides. So let that judgment not be made, and all is well. And even if the part nearest to it, this poor body, is cut, burned, festers, rots, still let the faculty that judges about these things keep quiet — that is, let it decide that nothing is evil or good which can happen equally to a bad man and a good one. For what happens equally to the one living against nature and the one living according to nature is itself neither according to nature nor against it.
40. Constantly conceive of the universe as one living creature, possessing one substance and one soul; and note how all things are referred back to its one perception, and how one urge drives its every action, and how each existing thing works together with the rest as a co-cause of whatever comes into being, and what a weaving and twining-together this all makes.
41. You are a little soul carrying a corpse, as Epictetus used to say.
42. There is no evil in things that come about through change, just as there is no good in things that arise from change.
43. Time is a river of things coming to be, and a violent stream; for as soon as each thing appears it has been swept away, and another is carried along, and it too will be carried off.
44. Every occurrence is as ordinary and expected as roses opening in springtime or fruit ripening come summer; so it is with sickness, dying, slander, betrayal, and anything else that delights or troubles the foolish.
45. What follows is always fitted intimately to what went before; for this is not some detached enumeration containing only what is forced together, but a reasoned connection — and just as the things that exist are arranged in harmonious order, so the things that come to be display not mere succession but a wondrous kinship.
46. Always remember the saying of Heraclitus: that the death of earth is to become water, and the death of water is to become air, and of air, fire, and back again. Remember too the man who forgets where the road leads; and that people are at odds with the very Reason that governs the universe, the thing they live with more constantly than anything else; and that the things they meet with every day seem strange to them; and that our waking deeds and words must not resemble a dream, since even while asleep we go on performing and uttering things; and that we must not behave toward our elders the way infants do, merely taking over whatever was handed down to us.
47. Just as, if one of the gods told you that you would die tomorrow, or certainly the day after, you would no longer think it a great matter whether it were the day after rather than tomorrow, unless you were utterly ignoble — for how much is the difference between them? — so too, count it no great matter whether it happens after many years rather than tomorrow.
48. Keep constantly in mind how many physicians have died, after knitting their brows so often over the sick; how many astrologers, after foretelling other people's deaths as if it were some great thing; how many philosophers, after countless arguments about death or immortality; how many great warriors, after killing so many; how many tyrants, after wielding power of life and death with terrible arrogance as though they were immortal; how many whole cities have died, so to speak — Helike, Pompeii, Herculaneum, and countless others. Go over as well all those you have known, one after another: one man buried another and was then laid out himself, and another buried him, and all of this in a short space of time. In short, always see human affairs as short-lived and worthless — yesterday a bit of mucus, tomorrow ashes or a mummy. So travel across this brief stretch of time following nature's way, and lay it down content, the way a ripened olive drops from the branch, speaking well of the ground that fed it and grateful to the tree that grew it.
49. Be like the headland against which the waves constantly break; it stands firm, and around it the raging waters are lulled to rest. "How unlucky I am, that this happened to me." Not at all—rather, how lucky I am, that although this has happened to me, I remain free of grief, neither crushed by what is present nor afraid of what is coming. For such a thing could have happened to anyone, but not everyone would have remained free of grief over it. Why then call that a misfortune rather than this a good fortune? Do you really call something a misfortune for a human being, when it is not a failure of human nature? And does something seem to you to be a failure of human nature, when it is not against that nature's own will? What then? You have learned its will. Does this thing that has happened prevent you at all from being just, great-minded, self-controlled, sensible, unhasty in judgment, unerring, honorable, free—and all the rest, in whose presence human nature keeps what is properly its own? Remember from now on, in everything that draws you toward grief, to apply this principle: not that this is a misfortune, but that bearing it nobly is good fortune.
50. A crude but still effective help toward contempt of death is the recollection of those who clung tenaciously to life. What more did they gain than those who died young? Somewhere, at any rate, they lie now — Caedicianus, Fabius, Julianus, Lepidus, or anyone like them, who carried out many others for burial and then were themselves carried out. The whole interval is small, and even that small span is spent amid how many troubles, in what company, and in what a wretched little body. So do not treat it as a great matter. Look behind you at the vast gulf of time, and ahead at another infinity. In the face of this, what difference is there between the man who lived three days and the man who lived three lifetimes, like old Nestor?
51. Always run the short way; the short way is the way in accordance with nature, so as to speak and act in the healthiest manner possible in everything. Such a purpose frees a person from toils, from straining, and from all contrivance and affectation.