The lamp shines until it is put out, without losing its gleam, and yet in you it all gutters out so early—truth, justice, self-control?

That it’s not what they do that bothers us: that’s a problem for their minds, not ours. It’s our own misperceptions. Discard them. Be willing to give up thinking of this as a catastrophe…and your anger is gone.

To live a good life: We have the potential for it. If we can learn to be indifferent to what makes no difference. This is how we learn: by looking at each thing, both the parts and the whole. Keeping in mind that none of them can dictate how we perceive it. They don’t impose themselves on us. They hover before us, unmoving. It is we who generate

The soul as a sphere in equilibrium: Not grasping at things beyond it or retreating inward. Not fragmenting outward, not sinking back on itself, but ablaze with light and looking at the truth, without and within.

The natural can never be inferior to the artificial; art imitates nature, not the reverse.

States will never be happy until rulers become philosophers or philosophers become rulers. —Plato, The Republic

Marcus was clearly fond of the philosopher Heraclitus, who said that we never step in the same river twice. It is equally true that no one ever reads the same Meditations twice. You notice new things each time.

That everything has to submit. But only rational beings can do so voluntarily.

People who feel hurt and resentment: picture them as the pig at the sacrifice, kicking and squealing all the way.