Meditations: A New Translation (Modern Library Classics)

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Frightened of change? But what can exist without it? Can any process take place without something being changed? 7.18 Enter their minds, and you’ll find the judges you’re so afraid of–and how judiciously they judge themselves. 9.18

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 Wash yourself clean. With simplicity, with humility, with indifference to everything but right and wrong. Care for other human beings. Follow God. 7.31 Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what’s left and live it properly. 7.56 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

The body and its parts are a river, the soul is a dream and mist, life is warfare and a journey far from home, lasting reputation is oblivion. 2.17 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. 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 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 Not to be driven this way and that, but to always behave with justice and to see things as they are. 4.22

Forget the future. When and if it comes, you’ll have the same resources to draw on–the same logos. 7.8

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 And to those who complain and try to obstruct and thwart things–they help as much as anyone. The world needs them as well. 6.42 Today Iescapedfrom anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions–not outside. 9.13 An athlete in the greatest of all contests — the struggle not to beoverwhelmedby anything that happens. 3.4 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

It never ceases toamazeme: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own. 12.4 Something (bad) happens to you. Good. It was meant for you by nature, woven into the pattern from the beginning. 3.26 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 The mind without passion is a fortress. No place is more secure. Once we take refuge there we are safe forever. 8.48The discipline of perception requires that we maintain absolute objectivity of thought: that we see things dispassionately for what they are. 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 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