Plain
Marcus Aurelius — The Emperor

What are people thinking and focused on? What do they love, and what do they hate? Picture their souls laid bare for all to see. When they think they're really hurting someone by speaking badly of them, and when they think they're doing someone a great favor by praising them — how full of themselves they are then!

Meditations, Book 9, Section 32 Book 9 · 43 of 60
Human Nature Knowing Yourself
Marcus Aurelius — The Emperor Original

What are their minds and understandings; and what the things that they apply themselves unto: what do they love, and what do they hate for? Fancy to thyself the estate of their souls openly to be seen. When they think they hurt them shrewdly, whom they speak ill of; and when they think they do them a very good turn, whom they commend and extol: O how full are they then of conceit, and opinion!

Meditations, Book 9, Section 32 Book 9 · 43 of 60
Marcus Aurelius — The Emperor

Try to hold the whole world in your mind, and picture the entire span of this present age. Focus on how quickly each thing changes. The time from when something is born to when it falls apart is so short. But the time before it existed and after it's gone is vast and endless. Everything you see will soon be gone. And those who watch things decay will vanish too. Someone who dies at a hundred and someone who dies young end up in the same place.

Meditations, Book 9, Section 31 Book 9 · 42 of 60
Death & Mortality What Matters Most
Marcus Aurelius — The Emperor Original

To comprehend the whole world together in thy mind, and the whole course of this present age to represent it unto thyself, and to fix thy thoughts upon the sudden change of every particular object. How short the time is from the generation of anything, unto the dissolution of the same; but how immense and infinite both that which was before the generation, and that which after the generation of it shall be. All things that thou seest, will soon be perished, and they that see their corruptions, will soon vanish away themselves. He that dieth a hundred years old, and he that dieth young, shall come all to one.

Meditations, Book 9, Section 31 Book 9 · 42 of 60
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Ancient philosophy, in plain English.

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