Meditations: A New Translation (Modern Library Classics)

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The things ordained for you–teach yourself to be at one with those. And to the people who share them with you–treat them with love. With real love. 6.39 What is divinedeservesour respect because it is good; what is human deserves our affection because it is like us. 2.13

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 To move from one unselfish action to another with God in mind. Only there, delight and stillness. 6.7The discipline of perception requires that we maintain absolute objectivity of thought: that we see things dispassionately for what they are. Enter their minds, and you’ll find the judges you’re so afraid of–and how judiciously they judge themselves. 9.18

Wash yourself clean. With simplicity, with humility, with indifference to everything but right and wrong. Care for other human beings. Follow God. 7.31To follow the logos in all things is to be relaxed and energetic, joyful and serious at once. 10.12 It’s the pursuit of these things, and your attempts to avoid them, that leave your mind in such turmoil. And yet they aren’t seeking you out; you are the one seeking them.Suspendjudgmentabout them. And at once they will lie still, and you will be freed from fleeing and pursuing. 11.11

So this is how a thoughtful person should await death: not with indifference, not with impatience, not with disdain but simply viewing it as one of the things that happens to us. Now you anticipate the child’s emergence from its mother’s womb; that is how you should await the hour when your soul will emerge from its compartment. 9.3 Dowhatnature demands. Get a move on–if you have it in you–and don’t worrywhetheranyone will give youcreditfor it. And don’t go expecting Plato’s republic; be satisfied with even the smallest progress, and treat the outcome of it all as unimportant. 9.29 Something (bad) happens to you. Good. It was meant for you by nature, woven into the pattern from the beginning. 3.26A straightforward, honest person should be like someone who stinks: when you’re in the same room with him, you know it. 11.15 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

At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work–as a human being…I am going to what I was born for.” 5.1 Today Iescapedfrom anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions–not outside. 9.13

Our duty is to exercise stringent control over the faculty of perception, with the aim of protecting our mind from error. 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. No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be good. Like gold or emerald or purple repeating to itself, “No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be emerald, my color undiminished.” 7.15 It would be wrong for anything to stand between you and attaining goodness — as a rational being and a citizen. 3.6