Marcus Aurelius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
1. All those things you pray to reach by a roundabout course you can have already, if you do not begrudge them to yourself. And this happens if you leave behind all the past, entrust the future to providence, and direct only the present toward reverence and justice. Toward reverence, so that you may love what has been allotted to you; for nature brought this to you and you to it. Toward justice, so that freely and without evasion you may speak the truth and act according to law and according to worth; and let nothing hinder you - neither another's wickedness, nor opinion, nor any word, nor even the sensation of this bit of flesh wrapped around you; for that part will see to its own suffering. If, then, whenever you come near your departure, having left behind all else, you honor only your ruling faculty and the divine within you, and if you fear not the ceasing of life at some point, but rather the never having begun to live according to nature, you will prove yourself deserving of the cosmos that fathered you, and you will stop being a foreigner in your own native land, marveling at the events of each day as though unexpected, and hanging dependent on this thing and that.
2. God sees all ruling faculties stripped bare of their material vessels, their husks, and their impurities; for with his own intellect alone he touches only what has flowed out from himself into these things and been channeled into them. If you too accustom yourself to do this, you will remove from yourself much of the distraction that surrounds you; for a man who does not look at the bits of flesh that lie around him will surely not busy himself with gazing at clothing, house, reputation, and all such trappings and stage-scenery.
3. There are three things of which you are composed: a little body, a little breath, and mind. Of these, the first two are yours only insofar as you must care for them, but only the third truly belongs to you. So if you separate from yourself - that is, from your own understanding - whatever others do or say, whatever you yourself have done or said, whatever troubles you as something to come, and whatever, belonging to the little body wrapped around you or to the connate breath, is attached without your choice, and whatever the external whirl of circumstance sweeps along; so that, freed from the things bound up with fate and pure, the power of your mind may live independent, on its own, doing what is just, willing what happens, and speaking the truth - if, I say, you separate from this ruling faculty the things attached to it through undue attachment, and the stretches of time both ahead and behind, and make yourself like Empedocles' sphere, "rounded, rejoicing in its circling stillness," and practice living only what you actually live, that is, the present, then you will be able to live out the time remaining to you until death untroubled, kindly, and at peace with your own guiding spirit.
4. I have often wondered how it is that each of us loves himself more than anyone else, and yet rates his own judgment of himself below what others think of him. At any rate, if a god came and stood before someone, or a wise teacher, and commanded him never to hold or plan any inward thought that he would not, in that very instant, say out loud, he would not endure it for even a single day. So much more weight do we give to what the neighbors will make of us than to our own private verdict on ourselves.
5. How is it that the gods, having arranged everything so well and with such kindness toward mankind, overlooked this one thing alone: that some men, thoroughly good men who through their actions made, as it were, covenants with the divine, and who through pious deeds and rites became familiar friends of the divine, once they die, never come to be again, but are utterly extinguished? But if this is really so, be assured that if it ought to have been otherwise, they would have made it so. For if it were just, it would also have been possible, and had it accorded with the nature of things, nature itself would have made it happen. So from the fact that it is not so — if indeed it is not so — let it convince you that it need not have been so; for you can see for yourself that in raising this question you are arguing a case of justice against god. But we would not be arguing with the gods like this unless they were supremely good and supremely just; and if that is so, they would not have overlooked anything in the ordering of the world being unjustly and unreasonably neglected.
6. Practice even the things you have despaired of. For the left hand, though unpracticed for most other tasks because unaccustomed to them, holds the rein more strongly than the right — because it has been trained to do that.
7. In what condition death should find a man, in body and in soul; the shortness of life; the immensity of time before and after; the frailty of all matter.
8. To see causes stripped bare of their husks; to see the ends toward which actions tend; what pain is; what pleasure is; what death is; what fame is; who is responsible for his own lack of ease; how no one is hindered by another; that everything is a matter of judgment.
9. In the use of your principles you must be like a pancratiast, not like a gladiator with a sword. For the one lays down the weapon he uses and picks it up again; the other always has his hand with him, and needs only to clench it.
10. See things as they are, dividing them into matter, cause, and end.
11. What power a man has to do nothing but what god is going to approve, and to accept everything that god assigns him — what follows in accordance with nature.
12. The gods are not to be blamed, for they do wrong neither willingly nor unwillingly; nor are men, for they too do wrong only unwillingly. So no one is to be blamed.
13. How ridiculous and how much a stranger to the world is the man who is amazed at anything that happens in life.
14. Either it is necessity and unalterable order, or it is providence open to persuasion, or it is a chaos without direction or purpose. If it is unalterable necessity, why do you resist it? If it is providence that admits of being appeased, make yourself worthy of help from the divine. If it is a chaos without a guiding mind, then be glad that in such a flood you yourself have within you a ruling mind; and if the flood carries you along, let it carry along the poor flesh, the little breath, everything else — for it will not carry away the mind.
15. The light of a lamp shines and does not lose its brightness until it is put out; will truth and justice and self-control be extinguished in you before that?
16. When the impression comes to you that someone has done wrong: how do I know that this was actually a wrong? And even if he did wrong, he has already condemned himself, and that is like a man tearing his own face. Consider that the man who does not want a bad person to do wrong is like a man who does not want the fig tree to bear its acrid sap in its figs, or babies to cry, or a horse to neigh, or any of the other things that must be. For what else can such a person do, given the character he has? If it really troubles you, cure his character.
17. If it is not fitting, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it. Let your impulse always be directed wholly toward this: always to see what it is that is producing the impression in you, and to unfold it by dividing it into cause, matter, its bearing on other things, and the time within which it must come to an end.
19. Realize at last that you have within you something stronger and more divine than the things that produce the passions and altogether pull you like a puppet on strings. What is my mind now? Is it fear? Is it suspicion? Is it desire? Is it something else of that kind?
20. First, do nothing at random or without reference to an end. Second, direct your actions toward nothing other than a goal that serves the common good.
21. That soon you will be nowhere, no one — nor will any of these things you now look at, nor any of these people now living. Everything is by nature made to change, to turn, to perish, so that other things in turn may come to be.
22. That everything is judgment, and this judgment is up to you. Lift it away, then, whenever you wish, and — like a ship rounding the headland — all is calm, a still bay, unruffled by any wave.
23. Any single activity whatsoever, once it stops at its proper time, suffers no harm simply from having stopped; nor does the one who performed it suffer any harm simply from its having stopped. In the same way, then, the whole made up of all one's actions — which is one's life — if it stops at its proper time, suffers no harm simply from having stopped; nor is the one who brought this chain to a close at its proper time badly off. Nature gives the time and the limit — sometimes one's own nature, when it comes with old age, but in every case the nature of the whole, by whose changing parts the universe as a whole remains ever young and in its prime. And whatever serves the whole is always good and fitting. So the ending of life is, for each person, no evil — since it is not even shameful, being neither a matter of choice nor cut off from the common good — and it is in fact beneficial, arriving right on schedule for the whole, serving the whole, and moving in step with it. For it is in this way that a person is carried by god, moving on the same course as god and toward the same ends in his purpose.
24. You must keep these three things ready at hand. First, regarding what you do: that it be neither done at random nor in a way that departs from what Justice would choose. Regarding what happens from outside: that it comes either by chance or by providence — and one must not blame chance, nor accuse providence. Second: what each thing is, from seed to the ensouling of it, and from the ensouling to the giving back of the soul — out of what elements it is put together, and into what it is dissolved. Third: that if you were suddenly lifted up on high and looked down on human affairs in all their endless variety, you would despise them, seeing at the same time how vast the region of air and ether surrounding them is; and that however many times you are lifted up, you will see the same things — sameness of kind, shortness of span. That is what all this vanity amounts to.
25. Throw out the judgment. You are saved. Who, then, is stopping you from throwing it out?
26. Whenever you are upset at something, you have forgotten that everything happens according to the nature of the whole; and that the wrongdoing is another's, not yours to carry; and besides this, that everything that happens has always happened this way, will happen this way, and is happening this way now, everywhere; you have forgotten how close the kinship is between one human being and the whole human race — a kinship not of blood or seed, but a sharing in the same mind. You have also forgotten that each person's mind is god, and has flowed from there; that nothing belongs to anyone as his own, but that his child, his body, and his very soul have all come from there; that everything is judgment; and that each person lives only the present moment, and it is only this that he loses.
27. Constantly call to mind those who were once fiercely indignant over something — those who rose to the greatest fame, or the worst misfortunes, or the bitterest enmities, or any other kind of fortune at all. Then stop and ask: where is all of that now? Smoke and ash and a story — or not even a story. Let a whole set of such cases come to mind alongside this: Fabius Catullinus on his country estate, Lucius Lupus tending his gardens, Stertinius down at Baiae, Tiberius up on Capri, Velius Rufus — and in general, any striving after anything done with self-importance. How cheap all that straining after things is, and how much more fitting for a philosopher, given whatever material is granted him, to show himself just, self-controlled, following the gods, simply and without pretense. For the vanity that hides under a show of freedom from vanity is the hardest of all to bear.
28. To those who keep asking: where have you seen the gods, or how have you grasped that they exist, that you worship them so? First of all, they are in fact visible even to the eye. And besides, I have never seen my own soul either, and yet I honor it. So too with the gods: from the power of theirs that I experience again and again, from this I grasp that they exist, and I revere them.
29. The salvation of life is this: to see each thing all the way through for what it is — what its material is, what its cause is; to do what is just with your whole soul, and to speak the truth. What is left, then, but to enjoy living by joining one good deed to the next, so that you leave not even the smallest gap between them?
30. One light of the sun, even though it is broken up by walls, mountains, and countless other things. One common substance, even though it is divided among countless bodies each of its own particular kind. One soul, even though it is divided among countless natures with their own individual boundaries. One intelligent soul, even though it seems to be split apart. Now the other parts of what has been named — such as vital breath, and the material substrates — are without sensation and have no natural affinity for one another; and yet even in their case something holds them together as one, a downward pull toward the same place. But mind, in its own particular way, is drawn toward what is of its own kind and unites with it, and this shared, communal feeling is never divided.
31. What are you seeking? To keep breathing? Or to have sensation, impulse, growth, and then decline again -- to use speech, to think? Which of these seems to you worth longing for? And if each of them is easily despised, go on to the last thing: to follow reason and god. But it conflicts with this to prize these things, and to be grieved that death will deprive one of them.
32. How small a portion of infinite and gaping time has been allotted to each of us -- it vanishes very quickly into eternity. How small a portion of the whole substance, how small a portion of the whole soul. On how small a clod of the whole earth do you crawl. Keeping all this in mind, imagine nothing great except this: to act as your own nature leads you to act, and to undergo what the common nature brings.
33. How does the ruling faculty use itself? For everything is in this. Everything else, whether within your choice or not, is dead and smoke.
34. Most apt to rouse contempt for death is this: that even those who count delight a good thing and suffering a bad one have nonetheless looked past it.
35. For the man for whom only what is timely is good, for whom it is all the same whether he performs more right actions in accordance with reason or fewer, and for whom it makes no difference whether his span of watching this world runs long or runs brief -- for this man not even death is terrible.
36. Man, you have been a citizen in this great city -- what does it matter to you whether for five years or three? What is according to the laws is equal for everyone. What is terrible, then, if it is not a tyrant nor an unjust judge who sends you out of the city, but the nature that brought you into it -- just as if the praetor who engaged a comic actor were now releasing him from the stage? 'Yet I have completed only three acts, not the five.' Well said -- but in life, three acts are the whole play. For the one who determines the completion is he who was once the cause of your composition, and is now the cause of your dissolution; you are the cause of neither. Go, then, graciously -- for indeed the one dismissing you is gracious too.