Meditations: A New Translation (Modern Library Classics)

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Wash yourself clean. With simplicity, with humility, with indifference to everything but right and wrong. Care for other human beings. Follow God. 7.31

Frightened of change? But what can exist without it? Can any process take place without something being changed? 7.18 Externalthings are not the problem. It’s your assessment of them… And if it’s that you’re not doingsomethingyou think you should be, why not just do it? 8.47 To follow the logos in all things is to be relaxed and energetic, joyful and serious at once. 10.12 It never ceases toamazeme: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own. 12.4

It’s time you realize that you have something in you more powerful and miraculous than the things that affect you and make you dance like a puppet. 12.19

To have that. Not a cistern but a perpetual spring. How? By working to win your freedom. Hour by hour. Throughpatience, honesty, and humility. 8.51 It’s unfortunate that this has happened. No. It is fortunate that this has happened and I’ve remained unharmed by it–not shattered by the present or frightened of the future. 4.49 This requires not merely passiveacquiescence in what happens, but active cooperation with the world, with fate and, above all,with other human beings. We were made, Marcus tells us over and over, not for ourselves but for others, and our nature is fundamentally unselfish. In our relationship with others we must work for their collective good, while treating them justly and fairly as possible.

What is divinedeservesour respect because it is good; what is human deserves our affection because it is like us. 2.13 To live a good life: We have the potential for it If we can learn to be indifferent to what makes no difference. 11.16 A straightforward, honest person should be like someone who stinks: when you’re in the same room with him, you know it. 11.15

Awaken; return to yourself. Now, no longer asleep, knowing they were only dreams, clear-headed again, treat everything around you as a dream. 6.31 Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what’s left and live it properly. 7.56 Then what should you work for? Only this: proper understanding; unselfish action; truthful speech. A resolve to accept whatever happens as necessary and familiar, flowing like water from that same source and spring. 4.33 Everything you’re trying to reach–by taking the long way round–you could have right now, this moment. If you’d only stop thwarting your own attempts. If you’d only let go of the past, entrust the future to God, and guide the present towards reverence and justice. 12.1

And for a human being to feel stress is normal–if he’s living a normal human life. And if it’s normal, how can it be bad? 6.33 If you can cut free of impressions that cling to the mind, of future and past–then you can spend the time you have left in tranquility. And in kindness. And at peace with the spirit within you. 12.3 The third discipline of will is in a sense the counterpart to the second, the discipline of action. Action governs our approach to the things in our control. The discipline of will governs our attitude to things that are not within our control The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the quality of your thoughts. 5.16