Begin the morning

Begin the morning by saying to yourself: I will meet with the meddler, the ungrateful, the arrogant, the deceitful, the envious, the unsociable. All this happens to them because they don't know good from evil. But I have seen that good is beautiful and evil is ugly. I have also seen that the wrongdoer is akin to me—not only through blood or seed, but because he shares in the same intelligence and the same portion of divinity. None of them can harm me: no one can involve me in what is ugly, and I cannot be angry with my kinsman or hate him. We were made for cooperation, like feet, hands, eyelids, and the rows of upper and lower teeth. So working against each other is against nature. To be vexed at someone or turn away from him is exactly that: working against him.

Whatever this is that I am, it is a bit of flesh and breath, and the ruling part. Throw away your books; stop letting yourself be distracted—that's not allowed anymore. Instead, as if you were dying right now, despise the flesh: it's blood and bones and a mesh, a web of nerves, veins, and arteries. Look too at what the breath is—air, and not even the same air, but expelled and drawn in again every moment. The third thing, then, is the ruling part. Consider this: you are an old man. Don't let this part go on being enslaved, no longer let it be jerked about like a puppet on strings toward unsociable impulses, no longer let it resent its present lot or shrink back from the future.

Everything that comes from the gods is full of providence. What comes from fortune is not separate from nature, but is interwoven and entangled with what providence orders. Everything flows from there. There is also necessity, and what serves the advantage of the whole universe, of which you are a part. Now what is good for every part of nature is whatever the nature of the whole brings, and whatever maintains that nature. The universe is preserved by the changes of the elements, and just as much by the changes of the things composed of the elements. Let these principles be enough for you; let them stand always as fixed convictions. Cast away the thirst for books, so that you may die not complaining but cheerfully, truly, and from the heart grateful to the gods.

Remember how long you've been putting these things off, and how many times you've been given an opportunity by the gods and haven't used it. You must at last perceive what universe you are a part of, and of what administrator of the universe your existence is an outflow, and that a limit has been set on your time—and if you don't use it to clear the clouds from your mind, it will be gone, and you will be gone, and it will never come again.

Every moment think steadily, as a Roman and a man, to do what you have in hand with perfect and simple dignity, and warmth of feeling, and freedom, and justice—and to give yourself relief from every other thought. And you will give yourself this relief if you do every act of your life as if it were your last, laying aside all carelessness and passionate resistance to the ruling of reason, and all hypocrisy, self-love, and dissatisfaction with what has been allotted to you. You see how few things a person needs to grasp in order to live a life that flows in calm and is like the life of the gods—for the gods, on their side, will ask nothing more of anyone who keeps these things.

You wrong yourself, you wrong yourself, my soul—but you will no longer have the chance to honor yourself. Every person's life is enough for them. But yours is nearly finished, and still your soul doesn't respect itself—instead it locates your happiness in the souls of others.

Do external things distract you? Then give yourself time to learn something new and good, and stop letting yourself be spun around. But you must also guard against being carried off in the other direction—for those too are triflers who have worn themselves out in life through sheer activity, yet have no goal to direct every impulse toward, and in a word, no goal for all their thoughts.

A man is rarely seen to be unhappy from not paying attention to what's in someone else's mind—but those who fail to attend to the movements of their own mind are bound to be unhappy.

You must always keep this in mind: what is the nature of the whole, and what is my nature, and how the one relates to the other, and what kind of part it is of what kind of whole—and that no one can stop you from always doing and saying what is in accordance with the nature of which you are a part.