Book Passages I Read Again, and Again, and Again
By: Casey Talbot
Tags: Quotes, Books And Authors, Inspiration

MEDITATIONS — MARCUS AURELIUS

“Consider all that you’ve gone through, all that you’ve survived. And that the story of your life is done, your assignment complete. How many good things have you seen? How much pain and pleasure have you resisted? How many honors have you declined? How many unkind people have you been kind to?”

“If you do the job in a principled way, with diligence, energy and patience, if you keep yourself free of distractions, and keep the spirit inside you undamaged, as if you might have to give it back at any moment —

If you can embrace this without fear or expectation — can find fulfillment in what you’re doing now, as Nature intended, and in superhuman truthfulness (every word, every utterance) — then your life will be happy.

No one can prevent that.”

“What am I doing with my soul?

Interrogate yourself, to find out what inhabits your so-called mind and what kind of soul you have now. A child’s soul, an adolescent’s, a woman’s? A tyrant’s soul? The soul of a predator — or its prey?”

“Sum Up: The body and its parts are a river, the soul a dream and mist, life is warfare and a journey far from home, lasting reputation is oblivion.”

“That things have no hold on the soul. They stand there unmoving, outside it. Disturbance comes only from within — from our own perceptions.”

“To stand up straight — not straightened.”

“Your ability to control your thoughts — treat it with respect. It’s all that protects your mind from false perceptions — false to your nature, and that of all rational beings. It’s what makes thoughtfulness possible, and affection for other people, and submission to the divine.”

“The sense he gave of staying on the path rather than being kept on it.”

“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own — not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me.”

“Remember how long you’ve been putting this off, how many extensions the gods gave you, and you didn’t use them. At some point you have to recognize what world it is that you belong to; what power rules it and from what source you spring; that there is a limit to the time assigned you, and if you don’t use it to free yourself it will be gone and will never return.”

“Yes, keep on degrading yourself, soul. But soon your chance at dignity will be gone. Everyone gets one life. Yours is almost used up, and instead of treating yourself with respect, you have entrusted your own happiness to the souls of others.”

“But when they obstruct our proper tasks, they become irrelevant to us — like sun, wind, animals. Our actions may be impeded by them, but there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action.

What stands in the way becomes the way.”

“Things gravitate toward what they were intended for.”

“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.”

“Remember: you cannot lose another life than the one you’re living now, or live another one than the one you’re losing.”

“Choose not to be harmed — and you won’t feel harmed.

Don’t feel harmed — and you haven’t been.”

“The tranquillity that comes when you stop caring what they say. Or think, or do. Only what you do.”

“To shrug it all off and wipe it clean — every annoyance and distraction — and reach utter stillness.”