Marcus Aurelius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
1. This too helps toward freedom from vanity: that you can no longer claim to have lived your whole life, or at least your life from youth on, as a philosopher. No, it has become plain to many others, and to yourself as well, that you are far from philosophy. So you are muddied, and it is no longer easy for you to acquire the reputation of a philosopher; your own position in life fights against it too. So then, if you have truly seen where the matter lies, let go of what you will be thought to be, and be satisfied if you live out whatever remains of your life, however much that is, as your own nature wants. Consider then what it wants, and let nothing else distract you; for you have had enough experience of how, wandering through many things, you nowhere found living well — not in syllogisms, not in wealth, not in reputation, not in enjoyment, nowhere. Where then is it? In doing what the nature of man seeks. How then will you do this? If you hold convictions from which your impulses and actions flow. What convictions? Convictions about good and bad things: that there is nothing good for a man which does not make him just, temperate, brave, and free, and nothing bad which does not produce in him the opposites of these.
2. At each action ask yourself: how does this stand with me? Will I regret it? A little while and I am dead, and everything is wiped away. What more do I seek, if the work now at hand is that of a creature with intelligence, sociable, and living under the same law as god?
3. Alexander and Gaius and Pompey — what are they compared to Diogenes and Heraclitus and Socrates? These latter men saw things, and their causes, and their matter, and their ruling faculties were the same as the things themselves; but as for the former, how much they had to foresee, and how many things they were slaves to!
4. They will do the same things none the less, even if you burst yourself with anger.
5. First of all, do not be disturbed; for everything that occurs unfolds by the working order of the whole universe, and in a little while you will be no one and nowhere, just as neither Hadrian nor Augustus are. Next, fixing your gaze on the matter, look at it as it is, and remembering that your task is to act as a decent human being, and to fulfill whatever your nature as a person requires, do that without turning aside, and say what appears most just to you — only do it kindly, with self-respect, and without pretense.
6. The nature of the whole has this as its work: to shift what is here to there, to change it, to lift it up from one place and carry it to another. All things are transformations, not such that one should fear something new; all things are familiar — but the allotments too are equal.
7. Any nature is satisfied within itself so long as it fares well along its own path, and a rational nature fares well when it lends assent to no impression that is false or hazy, when it aims its impulses solely at deeds that benefit the community, and when it limits what it desires and avoids to matters lying strictly within its own control, welcoming whatever share the shared nature allots it. For a human is a portion of that shared nature, much as a leaf's growth is a portion of a plant's growth — save that in the leaf's case, its growth belongs to something unfeeling, unreasoning, subject to hindrance, whereas in a person's case, one's portion belongs to something that cannot be hindered, that thinks and judges rightly, allotting each thing its measure of duration, substance, cause, action, and event, matching the two impartially and by desert. Do not search for whether one item corresponds exactly to another taken by itself, but rather whether the whole cluster of factors on one side corresponds, gathered together, to the whole on the other.
8. Reading is not possible for you now. But restraining insolence is possible; but rising above pleasures and pains is possible; but being above petty reputation is possible; but not being angered at the unfeeling and the ungrateful — and even caring for them — is possible.
9. Let no one, from now on, hear you finding fault with the life at court — nor even you yourself.
10. Regret is a kind of self-reproach for having let slip something useful; but what is useful must be something good, and a good and noble man ought to care about it; yet no good and noble man would ever regret having let slip some pleasure. Therefore pleasure is neither useful nor good.
11. What is this thing, in itself, by its own particular constitution — what is its substance and matter, what is its causal element, what does it do in the universe, and for how long a time does it exist?
12. When you rise from sleep with difficulty, remind yourself that it is in accordance with your constitution, and with human nature, to perform actions that serve the community, while sleeping is common even to irrational animals. And what is according to each thing's own nature is more its own, more suited to it, and indeed more pleasant to it.
13. Continually, and on every impression if possible, apply physics, apply the study of the affections, apply logical analysis.
14. Whomever you meet, say to yourself at once: what beliefs does this man hold about good and evil? For if he holds such-and-such beliefs about pleasure and pain and what produces each, and about reputation and disrepute, death and life, then it will not seem strange to me, and I will not think it odd, if he does such-and-such things — and I will remember that he is compelled to act that way.
15. Remember that just as it is absurd to be surprised that a fig tree bears figs, so it is absurd to be surprised that the universe bears whatever it bears, of which it is the bearer; and for a doctor and a pilot too it is absurd to be surprised if a patient has a fever, or if a contrary wind has arisen.
16. Remember that changing your course and following one who corrects you is equally an act of a free man; for it is your own activity, carried out according to your own impulse and judgment, and indeed according to your own mind.
17. If it is up to you, why do you do it? But if it is up to another, whom do you blame — atoms, or the gods? Either is madness. No one is to be blamed. For if you can, set the matter right; if you cannot do even that, at least set right the thing itself; and if you cannot even do that, what further use is it to you to find fault? Nothing should be done at random.
18. What has died does not fall outside the universe. If it remains here and is transformed here and breaks apart into the parts that compose it — the same elements shared by the cosmos and by you — even those components undergo change in turn, and none of them complains about it.
19. Each thing has come to be for some purpose — a horse, a vine. Why be surprised at this? Even the Sun will say, I have come to be for some task, and so will the rest of the gods. You, then — for what have you come to be? For pleasure? See whether the very thought can be tolerated.
20. Nature has aimed at the end of each thing no less than at its beginning and its whole course through, just like one who tosses a ball up. What good is it, then, to the little ball to be carried upward, or what harm to be carried down and even to have fallen? What good is it to the bubble to hold together, or what harm to be dissolved? The same is true of a lamp's flame.
21. Flip it over and look closely at its true nature — what it turns into once it has grown old, or fallen ill, or been sold into prostitution. Short-lived alike are the one who praises and the one who is praised, the one who remembers and the one who is remembered. And all this, moreover, in a mere corner of this region of the world — and not even here do all agree, nor does any single person agree even with himself; and the whole earth, too, is a mere point.
22. Attend to the underlying substance, or to the principle, or to the activity, or to the meaning. You suffer these things justly; or rather, you would prefer to become good tomorrow than to be good today.
23. Am I doing something? I do it referring it to the good of humankind. Does something happen to me? I accept it, tracing it back to the divine and to that wellspring of everything, out of which the whole fabric of existence is woven.
24. What does bathing look like to you? Oil, sweat, filth, greasy water, all of it disgusting. Such is every part of life, and everything it touches.
25. Lucilla buried Verus, then Lucilla died; Secunda buried Maximus, then Secunda died; Epitynchanus buried Diotimus, then Epitynchanus died; Antoninus buried Faustina, then Antoninus died. It's all the same story. Celer buried Hadrian, then Celer died. And where are those sharp minds now, the prophetic ones, the puffed-up ones? Sharp minds like Charax, and Demetrius the Platonist, and Eudaemon, and anyone like them. All of it short-lived, all long since dead. Some are not remembered even for a little while, some have turned into legends, and some have already faded out of the legends too. So keep this in mind: this little bundle of yours must either be scattered, or your small spark of breath put out, or you must be moved on and stationed somewhere else.
26. A man's joy is to do what is proper to a man. What is proper to a man is goodwill toward his own kind, disdain for the stirrings of the senses, discernment among plausible impressions, and contemplation of the nature of the whole and of what happens according to it.
27. Three relations: one to the body that encases you, one to the divine cause from which everything comes to everyone, and one to those who live alongside you.
28. Pain is either an evil for the body — let the body say so, then — or for the soul. But the soul can keep its own clear sky and calm and simply refuse to judge it an evil. For every judgment, every impulse, every desire and aversion, lies within, and nothing evil climbs up that far.
29. Rub out your impressions again and again, telling yourself: right now it is in my power that no wickedness live in this soul, no desire, no disturbance at all — but seeing everything for what it is, I use each thing according to its worth. Remember this power is yours by nature.
30. Speak — whether in the senate or to anyone at all — in an orderly way, not over-emphatically. Use sound sense.
31. The court of Augustus: wife, daughter, descendants, ancestors, sister, Agrippa, relatives, household, friends, Areius, Maecenas, physicians, sacrificing priests — the whole court, dead. Then move on to the others, taking not just the death of a single man, say a Pompey, but that phrase carved on tombs: 'last of his own line.' Work out how much anxious effort those before them spent trying to leave behind an heir — and then, necessarily, someone had to be the last one after all. Here again, the death of an entire line.
32. You must build your life action by action, and be satisfied if each one, as far as possible, delivers what is proper to it. No one can stop it from delivering what is proper to it. — But something external will get in the way. — Nothing can get in the way of acting justly, moderately, and sensibly. But some other, more active undertaking may well be blocked. Yet by welcoming the very obstacle, and by shifting gracefully to what is given instead, another action is at once substituted, one that fits into the composition we are speaking of.
33. Take it without vanity, let it go without a struggle.
34. If you have ever seen a severed hand, or foot, or a head cut off, lying somewhere apart from the rest of the body — that is what a man makes of himself, as far as it's in his power, when he refuses what happens and cuts himself off from it, or when he does something unsociable. You have flung yourself away, somehow, from the unity that nature intends — you were born a part of it, and now you have hacked yourself off. Yet here is the fine thing about it: you are able to unite yourself again. God has allowed no other part, once separated and cut away, to come back together again — but consider the kindness by which he has honored man: he arranged it so that a man need never be torn from the whole to begin with, and, if he is torn away, so that he can return, grow back together, and take up again his place as a part.
35. Just as nature has given each rational being its other faculties, more or less in proportion to what the nature of rational beings possesses, so too we have received this one faculty from her. For in the way that she turns everything that stands against her and resists her back into her own service, ranks it within destiny, and makes it a part of herself, so too the rational animal can turn every obstacle into its own material and make use of it for whatever it had already set out to do.
36. Don't let the picture of your whole life overwhelm you. Don't dwell on all the hardships that might plausibly happen to you, taken all together — instead, for each thing that presents itself now, ask yourself: what exactly about this task is unbearable, past enduring? You'll be ashamed to admit an answer. Then remind yourself that it is not the future or the past that weighs on you, but always the present — and the present shrinks down small once you mark it off by itself alone and put your mind to the test, whether it really cannot hold up against that alone.
37. Is Panthea or Pergamus still sitting beside the coffin of Verus? Or Chabrias or Diotimus beside that of Hadrian? Ridiculous. And even if they were still sitting there, would the dead notice? And if they noticed, would they be pleased? And if they were pleased, would that make the mourners themselves immortal? Weren't they too destined to age into old women and old men, and afterward die? And once these had died, what would those others have done next? All of it is rot and refuse stuffed in a sack.
38. If you can see sharply, look and judge, as the wisest, they say, do.
39. I see no virtue in the constitution of the rational animal that stands opposed to justice, but I do see one opposed to pleasure: self-control.
40. If you take away your own opinion about the thing that seems to be paining you, you yourself stand on the safest ground.—Who is 'yourself'?—Reason.—But I am not reason.—Granted. Then let reason itself not pain itself; but if something else in you is faring badly, let that part hold whatever view of its own condition it likes.
41. A hindrance to sensation is an evil for a living nature. A hindrance to impulse is likewise an evil for a living nature. And there is something else too that in the same way hinders and harms the constitution of plants. So too a hindrance to the mind is an evil for a rational nature. Now carry all of this over to yourself. Does pain or pleasure touch you? Sensation will attend to that. Has an obstacle come up against your impulse? If you rushed at it without qualification, then it is already an evil for you as a rational being; but if you allow for the common case, you have not yet been harmed nor hindered. As for what belongs properly to the mind, no one else is in the habit of hindering it; for neither fire nor iron nor a tyrant nor slander nor anything whatsoever touches it, once it has become 'a sphere, rounded, at rest in its own circling.'
42. I am not worthy to pain myself, for I have never willingly pained anyone else either.
43. Different things gladden different people; but what gladdens me is this: keeping the ruling faculty healthy, turning away from no human being and from nothing that happens to human beings, but looking on everything, receiving it, and using each thing, with kindly eyes, according to its worth.
44. Grant yourself this present time as a gift. Those who chase after posthumous fame do not reckon that the people to come will be just the same as these people they now find hard to bear — and those people too will be mortal. What is it to you, in any case, if those to come echo such-and-such sounds about you, or hold such-and-such an opinion of you?
45. Pick me up and throw me wherever you like. For even there I will keep the guiding spirit within me gracious — that is, content, so long as it can hold and act in accordance with its own constitution. Is this worth it, that on its account my soul should fare badly and become worse than itself — brought low, straining after things, clinging to things, cringing? And what will you find that is worth that?
46. Nothing can happen to any human being that is not a human accident, nor to an ox what is not an ox's, nor to a vine what is not a vine's, nor to a stone what is not proper to a stone. If, then, what happens to each thing is what is usual and natural for it, why should you be resentful? The common nature has not brought you anything unbearable.
47. If you are pained because of something external, it is not that thing that troubles you but your own judgment about it — and that you have the power to erase right now. But if it is something in your own disposition that pains you, who is stopping you from correcting the belief? Likewise, if you are pained because you are not doing something you believe to be sound, why not do it instead of being pained?—But something stronger stands in the way.—Then do not be pained, for the cause of its not being done does not lie with you.—But it is not worth living if this cannot be done.—Then leave life in good will, just as a man who is still acting well would when he dies, gracious even toward what stood in his way.
48. Remember that the ruling faculty becomes unconquerable when it gathers itself inward and is content with itself, doing nothing it does not wish, even when it takes its stand without reason. How much more, then, when it judges something with reason and after careful consideration! For this reason the mind free of the passions is a citadel — a human being has nothing stronger to flee to, and once he has taken refuge there he is thereafter unassailable. The one who has not seen this is ignorant; the one who has seen it and does not take refuge there is unfortunate.
49. Tell yourself nothing more than what the first impressions report. It has been reported that so-and-so speaks ill of you. This has been reported; but that you have been harmed — that has not been reported. I see that the child is sick. I see it; but that he is in danger, I do not see. So then, always stay with the first impressions and add nothing yourself from within, and nothing happens to you — or rather, add to it only as one who understands each of the things that happen in the world.
50. The cucumber is bitter? Set it aside. There are brambles on the path? Step around them. That is enough — do not add, 'And why do such things even exist in the world?' Since a natural philosopher would laugh at you for that, just as a carpenter or a cobbler would laugh at you for criticizing them because you see in their workshop shavings and off-cuts from what they are making. And yet they at least have somewhere to throw those away, while the nature of the whole has nothing outside itself — but the marvel of this craft is that, having bounded itself, it turns back into itself everything within it that seems to decay, grow old, and become useless, and out of these very things makes other, fresh things again, so that it needs no material from outside and has no need of anywhere to cast off what has gone rotten. It is content, then, with its own space, its own matter, and its own craft.
51. Don't be dragged along in your actions, don't be muddled in your conversations, don't wander aimlessly in your impressions, don't let your soul be wholly pulled inward or driven outward, and don't be so busy in life that you have no room to breathe. They kill, they hack bodies to pieces, they hound you with curses. What has any of that to do with keeping your mind clear, sound, self-controlled, just? It's like a man standing beside a clear, sweet spring and cursing it — it never stops bubbling up drinkable water. Even if he throws mud or dung into it, it will quickly scatter it, wash it away, and take no stain at all. So how do you become an ever-flowing spring rather than a well? By guarding yourself, every hour, toward freedom, along with good will, simplicity, and self-respect.
52. A man who doesn't know what the universe is doesn't know where he is. A man who doesn't know what he was born for doesn't know who he is, nor what the universe is. And a man who fails at either of these could not even say what he himself was born for. So what do you make of a man who chases or flees the applause of people clapping, when they don't know where they are or who they are?
53. Do you want to be praised by a man who curses himself three times an hour? Do you want to please a man who doesn't please himself? Does a man please himself who regrets nearly everything he does?
54. No longer merely breathe in unison with the air around you, but now think in unison with the intelligence that surrounds all things. For the power of intelligence is spread everywhere and pervades everything, for the one able to draw it in, no less than the air is for the one able to breathe it.
55. Vice in general does no harm to the universe, and a particular vice does no harm to anyone else — it is harmful only to the one to whom it has been granted also to be rid of it, as soon as he chooses to be.
56. To my own power of choice, my neighbor's power of choice is just as indifferent as his little breath and his little scrap of flesh. For even if we exist above all for one another's sake, still each of our ruling faculties has authority over itself alone. Otherwise my neighbor's wickedness would have to be my own harm — and god did not see fit to allow that, so that my misfortune should not depend on someone else.
57. The sun seems to be poured out, and indeed it is poured out everywhere, yet it is not drained away. For this pouring is a kind of stretching — that's why its rays are called aktines, from the verb 'to stretch out.' You can see what a ray is like if you watch sunlight entering a shadowed room through some narrow opening: it stretches out in a straight line and, as it were, presses against whatever solid thing it meets that blocks the air beyond, and there it stops — it doesn't slide off or fall down. That is the kind of pouring-forth and spreading the mind should have — never a spilling out, but a stretching — and when it meets obstacles it should not press against them violently or headlong, nor collapse, but should stand firm and illuminate whatever receives it. For it is the surface that fails to pass the light along that deprives itself of the light.
58. The man who fears death fears either the loss of all sensation, or a different kind of sensation. But if you will have no sensation at all, then you won't feel anything bad either; and if you gain a different kind of sensation, you will be a different kind of living being, and you will not have stopped living.
59. People exist for one another's sake. So either teach them, or put up with them.
60. An arrow moves one way, the mind another. Even when the mind is being cautious, even when it is turning something over in careful thought, it is still moving in a straight line, no less, toward the thing set before it.
61. Go into each person's ruling faculty, and let every other person, too, go into your own.