Meditations: A New Translation (Modern Library)

Like the impresario ringing down the curtain on an actor: “But I’ve only gotten through three acts …!” Yes. This will be a drama in three acts, the length fixed by the power that directed your creation, and now directs your dissolution. Neither was yours to determine. So make your exit with grace—the same grace shown to you.

To be angry at something means you’ve forgotten: That everything that happens is natural. That the responsibility is theirs, not yours.

If it’s not right, don’t do it. If it’s not true, don’t say it. Let your intention be <…>

Throw out your misperceptions and you’ll be fine. (And who’s stopping you from throwing them out?)

The condition of soul and body when death comes for us. Shortness of life. Vastness of time before and after. Fragility of matter.

Practice even what seems impossible. The left hand is useless at almost everything, for lack of practice. But it guides the reins better than the right. From practice.

Mastery of reading and writing requires a master. Still more so life.

It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own. If a god appeared to us—or a wise human being, even—and prohibited us from concealing our thoughts or imagining anything without immediately shouting it out, we wouldn’t make it through a single day. That’s how much we value ot

Socrates declining Perdiccas’s invitation “so as to avoid dying a thousand deaths” (by accepting a favor he couldn’t pay back).