1. From my grandfather Verus I learned good morals and the government of my temper.

2. From the reputation and remembrance of my father, modesty and a manly character.

3. From my mother, piety and beneficence, and abstinence, not only from evil deeds, but even from evil thoughts; and further, simplicity in my way of living, far removed from the habits of the rich.

4. From my great-grandfather, not to have frequented public schools, and to have had good teachers at home, and to know that on such things a man should spend liberally.

5. From my governor, to be neither of the green nor of the blue faction at the circus, nor a partizan either of the Parmularius or the Scutarius at the gladiators' fights; from him too I learned endurance of labour, and to want little, and to work with my own hands, and not to meddle with other people's affairs, and not to be ready to listen to slander.

6. From Diognetus, not to busy myself about trifling things, and not to give credit to what was said by miracle-workers and jugglers about incantations and the driving away of daemons and such things; and to endure freedom of speech; and to have become intimate with philosophy.

7. From Rusticus I received the impression that my character required improvement and discipline; and from him I learned not to be led astray to sophistic emulation, nor to writing on speculative matters, nor to delivering little hortatory orations, nor to showing myself off as a man who does much discipline, or does benevolent acts in order to make a display.

8. From Apollonius I learned freedom of will and undeviating steadiness of purpose; to look to nothing else, not even for a moment, except to reason; and to be always the same, in sharp pains, on the occasion of the loss of a child, and in long illness.

9. From Sextus, a benevolent disposition, and the example of a family governed in a fatherly manner, and the idea of living conformably to nature; and gravity without affectation, and to look carefully after the interests of friends, and to tolerate ignorant persons, and those who form opinions without consideration.

1. 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 cannot distinguish 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. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my kin, or hate them. We were made to work together like feet, like hands, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions.

2. Whatever this is that I am, it is a little flesh and breath, and the ruling part. Despise the flesh: blood and bones and a network, a jumble of nerves, veins, and arteries. Consider the breath: wind, always changing, expelled and sucked back in again. The third part is the ruling master. Put away your books; distract yourself no longer; they are not allowed. But as if you were now dying, despise the flesh.

3. Remember how long you have been putting this off, how many times the gods have given you opportunities you did not use. You have to realize what kind of universe you belong to, and what kind of power you are a part of. 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.

4. Every hour of the day, give your undivided attention to the task at hand, as a Roman and as a human being, with strict and simple dignity, with kindness, freedom, and justice. Free your mind from all other thoughts. You will do this if you perform each act of life as if it were your last.

5. Through not observing what is in the mind of another a man has seldom been seen to be unhappy; but those who do not observe the movements of their own minds must of necessity be unhappy.

6. Time is a river, a violent current of events, glimpsed once and already carried past us, and another follows and is gone.

3. Men look for retreats for themselves, in the country, by the coast, or in the hills. There is nowhere that a person can find a more peaceful and trouble-free retreat than in his own mind. So constantly give yourself this retreat, and renew yourself. Let your basic principles be brief and fundamental, the kind that will at once close out the world and send you back without irritation to the life to which you must return.

4. If mind is common to us, then reason, by which we are rational beings, is also common. If so, then reason which directs what is to be done and what is not to be done is also common; if so, law also is common; if so, we are fellow-citizens; if so, we are members of some political body; if so, the universe is as it were a state. For of what other common political community can anyone say that the whole human race is a member?

7. Take away your opinion, and there is taken away the complaint, 'I have been harmed.' Take away the complaint, 'I have been harmed,' and the harm is taken away.

10. Consider that everything which happens, happens justly, and if you observe carefully, you will find it to be so. I do not mean only with respect to the continuity of a series of events, but with respect to justice, and as if someone were appointing to each thing its value according to its desert.

20. Everything in any way beautiful has its own beauty in itself, and is complete in itself; praise forms no part of it. At all events, what is praised is neither made better nor worse. Does the emerald lose its beauty if it is not praised? Does gold, or ivory, or a purple robe, or a lyre, or a dagger, or a little flower, or a shrub?

48. Always bear in mind how many doctors have died after furrowing their brows over their patients; how many astrologers after predicting the deaths of others as if it were something grand; how many philosophers after endless debates on death and immortality; how many great commanders after slaughtering thousands. City after city has died entirely: Helike, Pompeii, Herculaneum, and countless others. Walk the path of nature, and when your time comes, leave it cheerfully, as an olive falls when it is ripe, blessing the branch that bore it, and giving thanks to the tree that gave it life.

15. Remember that to change your mind and to follow him who sets you right is to be nonetheless the free agent that you were before. For this act is your own, performed in accordance with your own impulse and your own judgment.

28. Pain is either an evil to the body—then let the body say so—or to the soul; but it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility, and not to think that pain is an evil. For every judgment and movement and desire and aversion is within, and nothing evil can force its way within.

34. Have you ever seen a severed hand or foot, or a head cut off, lying apart from the rest of the trunk? Such does a man make himself, as far as he can, when he will not be reconciled to what happens, and severs himself from society, or when he does an ungentle act. Yet observe the beautiful provision: it is in a man's power to unite himself again with that from which he was separated.

50. A cucumber is bitter? Throw it away. There are briars in the road? Turn aside from them. This is enough. Do not add: 'And why were such things made in the world?'

59. Men exist for the sake of one another. Teach them then or bear with them.

1. All those things at which you wish to arrive by a circuitous road, you can have now if you do not refuse them to yourself. And this means, if you will leave all the past behind you, and entrust the future to providence, and direct the present only conformably to piety and justice.

5. How can it be that the gods, after having arranged all things well and with love to men, have overlooked this alone, that some men, and very good men, who have had as it were most communion with the divine, should when they die once exist no longer, but be completely extinguished?

36. Mortal man, you have lived as a citizen in this great city. What matters it to you whether five years or fifty? For to every man that which is according to the laws is equal. What is there terrible then in being sent away from the city, not by a tyrant or an unjust judge, but by nature who brought you into it? Just as if the magistrate who employed an actor dismissed him from the stage: 'But I have not finished the five acts, only three.' You have played your part well; in life three acts make a finished play.

For he who determines the end is the one who once caused your composition, and now causes your dissolution. You are not responsible for either. Depart then with a good grace, for he who dismisses you is gracious.