Meditations: A New Translation (Modern Library Classics)

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To follow the logos in all things is to be relaxed and energetic, joyful and serious at once. 10.12 Something (bad) happens to you. Good. It was meant for you by nature, woven into the pattern from the beginning. 3.26 Today Iescapedfrom anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions–not outside. 9.13 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

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 An athlete in the greatest of all contests — the struggle not to beoverwhelmedby anything that happens. 3.4The tranquility that comes when you stop caring what they say. Or think, or do. Only what you do. 4.18 Objectivejudgment now at this very moment. Unselfish action, now at this very moment. Willing acceptance, now at this very moment. Of all external events. That’s all you need. 9.6

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 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. 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 The mind without passion is a fortress. No place is more secure. Once we take refuge there we are safe forever. 8.48At 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 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

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 To move from one unselfish action to another with God in mind. Only there, delight and stillness. 6.7Frightened of change? But what can exist without it? Can any process take place without something being changed? 7.18 It never ceases toamazeme: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own. 12.4