Wider Ancient Witness Archive · 4.2 Greek and Greco-Roman Moral Wisdom Background Archive
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Marcus Aurelius — Select Meditations
This text is included as a comparative, historical, philosophical, ritual, textual, or fragmentary witness. It is not presented as part of the Restored Bible.
Marcus Aurelius — Select Meditations
[Selected reflections from the private writings of the emperor, addressed to himself.]
Begin each morning by saying to yourself: today I shall meet the meddler, the ungrateful, the arrogant, the deceitful, the envious, the unsociable. All this has come upon them through their ignorance of good and evil. But I have seen that the good is the noble and the evil the shameful; and that the wrongdoer is my kinsman, sharing the same reason and the same divine portion. So none of them can harm me, nor can I be angry with my kinsman or hate him; for we were made to work together, like the feet, the hands, the eyelids, the rows of the upper and lower teeth.
Think of how long you have put these things off, and how often you have received an extension from the gods and not used it. It is time at last to see what kind of order you belong to, and who that ruler is whose offspring you are; and that a limit has been set to your time, which, if you do not use it to clear away your clouds, will be gone, and you with it, and never return.
Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to live. Death hangs over you; while you live, while it is in your power, be good. Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.
You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength. The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts; therefore guard them, and admit nothing not in keeping with virtue and reason.
Everything is changing; the universe is change, and our life is what our thoughts make it. Whatever happens, happens rightly; watch closely, and you will find it so. Love the craft you have learned, and rest in it. Pass through the remainder of your days as one who has entrusted his whole self to the gods, and made himself neither tyrant nor slave to any man.