Marcus Aurelius

Human, you have been a citizen in this great city; what difference does it make if you live in it for five years or a hundred? For what is according to the laws is equal for everyone. What's so terrible, then, if you're sent from the city not by a tyrant or an unjust judge, but by Nature who first brought you in—just as when the stage director who hired the actor dismisses him from the stage? "But I haven't finished the five acts, only three." True, but in life three acts make a complete play. For it is determined complete by the one who first caused your composition and now causes your dissolution. You are responsible for neither. Depart, then, graciously, for he who dismisses you is gracious.

For one who regards only the right time as good, who considers it equally good to perform more or fewer actions according to right reason, and to whom it makes no difference whether they contemplate the universe for a longer or a shorter time—for such a person, death is not fearful.

The most effective incentive to despise death is the realization that even those who consider pleasure good and pain evil still have despised it.

How does your governing faculty use itself? For in this is the key to everything. All other things, whether within your power or not, are but corpses and smoke.

What a tiny portion of the boundless and infinite time has been assigned to each of us! For it vanishes quickly into the eternal. What a tiny portion of the whole substance! What a tiny portion of the universal soul! On what a tiny clod of the whole earth you crawl! Reflecting on all this, consider nothing great except doing what your nature leads you to do, and enduring what universal nature brings.

What more do you want? To continue to exist? But what is that? Is it sensation, desire, growth, and then ceasing to grow? Is it to speak, think? Which of these seems worth desiring? If each is contemptible, proceed to the final goal—to follow reason and God. But this contradicts valuing those other things, to be distressed because death deprives you of them.

There is one light of the sun, even though it is divided by walls, mountains, and countless other things. There is one common substance, even though it is divided into countless bodies with their own particular qualities. There is one soul, though it is distributed among countless natures and individual boundaries. There is one intelligent soul, although it seems to be divided. All the other parts of these wholes, such as breath and matter, are without sensation and lack kinship with each other. Yet even they are held together by the unifying principle and the gravity that draws them together. But mind tends specifically toward what is of the same nature as itself, and combines with it, and the feeling of community is not interrupted.

The salvation of life is to see what each thing truly is, examining it as to both matter and cause. To do just actions from the soul and to speak the truth. What remains but to enjoy life, linking one good to another, so as not to leave even the smallest gap between?

To those who ask, "Where have you seen the gods or how have you become convinced of their existence that you worship them?" First, they are visible even to the eyes. Second, I have not seen my own soul either, and yet I honor it. So too with the gods: from the evidence of their power time after time, I perceive that they exist and I revere them.

Constantly recall those who have complained greatly about anything, those who have been most conspicuous by the great honors they received, or misfortunes they suffered, or their enmity, or any sort of fortune. Then stop and ask: Where are they all now? Smoke and ashes and a tale, or not even a tale. Bring to mind also everything of this sort: Fabius Catullinus in his country estate, Lusius Lupus in his gardens, Stertinius at Baiae, Tiberius at Capri, and Velius Rufus—and in general the strong attachment to anything coupled with conceit. How worthless are all these things they pursue with such earnestness, and how much more philosophical it would be to show oneself, amid the material one has been given, just, temperate, and obedient to the gods—without ostentation. For the most severe disease is the pride that rejoices in its humility.