HKB
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Often appears with: the fear of death · fate, destiny, and necessity · perception and the senses · justice as a virtue · worthlessness of pursuits · vanity of public entertainments · truth and justice · return to core principles · prudence and practical wisdom · pride, vanity, and humility · pleasure, pain, and the good life · nature of death
Usually: detachment (5) · argument (3) · reflection (3) · skepticism (3) · confronting death (2) · exhortation (2) · grief and loss (1) · sudden reversal of fortune (1) · censure (1) · lament (1)
“Remember that all is opinion. For what was said by the Cynic Monimus is manifest: and manifest too is the use of what was said, if a man receives what may be got out of it as far as it is true.” Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus · insight
He reflects that sensible things and reputations fade quickly, warns against mindless curiosity about others’ minds, urges reverence for the inner daemon, and insists that life’s losses reduce to the present moment.
purposes of nature. To observe too how man comes near to the Deity, and by what part of him, and when this part of man is so disposed (VI. 28). 13. Nothing is more wretched than a man who traverses everything in a round, and pries into the things beneath the earth, as the poet says, and seeks by conjecture what is in the minds of his neighbors, without perceiving that it is sufficient to attend to the daemon within …
The author argues that assent is unstable and the world’s things are transient and degraded, so serious pursuits are misguided; instead one should wait for dissolution and stay anchored to what aligns with the universe.
badness, nor an effect of my own badness, and the common weal is not injured, why am I troubled about it, and what is the harm to the common weal? 36. Do not be carried along inconsiderately by the appearance of things, but give help [to all] according to thy ability and their fitness; and if they should have sustained loss in matters which are indifferent, do not imagine this to be a damage; for it is a bad habit. …
Marcus teaches that death and all sensible things quickly vanish, that fearing natural processes makes one childish, and that observing the order of the whole brings one near the divine.
[A] Pindar, in the Theaetetus of Plato. See xi. 1. 14. Though thou shouldest be going to live three thousand years and as many times ten thousand years, still remember that no man loses any other life than this which he now lives, nor lives any other than this which he now loses. The longest and shortest are thus brought to the same. For the present is the same to all, though that which perish is not the same;+[A] a…
He emphasizes life’s sameness and shortness, calls people to fan their governing principles into life, and depicts the vanity of worldly “show” compared to truth and justice.
I angry? Dost thou think that a false opinion has less power than the bile in the jaundiced or the poison in him who is bitten by a mad dog? 58. No man will hinder thee from living according to the reason of thy own nature: nothing will happen to thee contrary to the reason of the universal nature. 59. What kind of people are those whom men wish to please, and for what objects, and by what kind of acts? How soon wi…
The author advises seeing others’ minds to understand their judgments, notes universal alteration, insists it is another man’s sin that should trouble no one, and treats the end of actions as cessation without real harm.
XLII. It is common to all trades and professions to mind and intend that only, which now they are about, and the instrument whereby they work. XLIII. When at any time thou art offended with any one's impudency, put presently this question to thyself: 'What? Is it then possible, that there should not be any impudent men in the world! Certainly it is not possible.' Desire not then that which is impossible. For this on…
When you love or kiss something, mentally label its nature from the smallest parts, so that loss—like a broken earthen vessel or a dead wife or child—doesn’t shock you emotionally.
XII. If you intend to improve, throw away such thoughts as these: if I neglect my affairs, I shall not have the means of living: unless I chastise my slave, he will be bad. For it is better to die of hunger and so to be released from grief and fear than to live in abundance with perturbation; and it is better for your slave to be bad than for you to be unhappy. Begin then from little things. Is the oil spilled? Is a…