Meditations: A New Translation (Modern Library Classics)

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Dowhatnature demands. Get a move on–if you have it in you–and don’t worrywhetheranyone will give youcreditfor it. And don’t go expecting Plato’s republic; be satisfied with even the smallest progress, and treat the outcome of it all as unimportant. 9.29 Forget the future. When and if it comes, you’ll have the same resources to draw on–the same logos. 7.8 Humans were made to help others. And when we do help others–or help them do something–we’re doing what we weredesignedfor. We perform our function. 9.42 No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be good. Like gold or emerald or purple repeating to itself, “No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be emerald, my color undiminished.” 7.15 Then where is the harm to be found? In your capacity to see it. Stop doing that and everything will be fine. 4.39

Objectivejudgment now at this very moment. Unselfish action, now at this very moment. Willing acceptance, now at this very moment. Of all external events. That’s all you need. 9.6 To follow the logos in all things is to be relaxed and energetic, joyful and serious at once. 10.12 At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work–as a human being…I am going to what I was born for.” 5.1

So this is how a thoughtful person should await death: not with indifference, not with impatience, not with disdain but simply viewing it as one of the things that happens to us. Now you anticipate the child’s emergence from its mother’s womb; that is how you should await the hour when your soul will emerge from its compartment. 9.3 Then what should you work for? Only this: proper understanding; unselfish action; truthful speech. A resolve to accept whatever happens as necessary and familiar, flowing like water from that same source and spring. 4.33 The third discipline of will is in a sense the counterpart to the second, the discipline of action. Action governs our approach to the things in our control. The discipline of will governs our attitude to things that are not within our control The things ordained for you–teach yourself to be at one with those. And to the people who share them with you–treat them with love. With real love. 6.39 If you can cut free of impressions that cling to the mind, of future and past–then you can spend the time you have left in tranquility. And in kindness. And at peace with the spirit within you. 12.3

Frightened of change? But what can exist without it? Can any process take place without something being changed? 7.18 What is divinedeservesour respect because it is good; what is human deserves our affection because it is like us. 2.13 Not to be driven this way and that, but to always behave with justice and to see things as they are. 4.22 Externalthings are not the problem. It’s your assessment of them… And if it’s that you’re not doingsomethingyou think you should be, why not just do it? 8.47 Because anger too is weakness, as much as breaking down and giving up the struggle. Both are deserters: the man who breaks and runs, and the one who lets himself be alienated from his fellow humans. 11.9Our duty is to exercise stringent control over the faculty of perception, with the aim of protecting our mind from error. Awaken; return to yourself. Now, no longer asleep, knowing they were only dreams, clear-headed again, treat everything around you as a dream. 6.31

Tim Ferriss Show – Naval Ravikant on Happiness, Reducing Anxiety, Crypto Stablecoins, and Crypto Strategy (#473) To have that. Not a cistern but a perpetual spring. How? By working to win your freedom. Hour by hour. Throughpatience, honesty, and humility. 8.51 And for a human being to feel stress is normal–if he’s living a normal human life. And if it’s normal, how can it be bad? 6.33 Something (bad) happens to you. Good. It was meant for you by nature, woven into the pattern from the beginning. 3.26 This requires not merely passiveacquiescence in what happens, but active cooperation with the world, with fate and, above all,with other human beings. We were made, Marcus tells us over and over, not for ourselves but for others, and our nature is fundamentally unselfish. In our relationship with others we must work for their collective good, while treating them justly and fairly as possible.Today Iescapedfrom anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions–not outside. 9.13 The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the quality of your thoughts. 5.16

The tranquility that comes when you stop caring what they say. Or think, or do. Only what you do. 4.18 It’s the pursuit of these things, and your attempts to avoid them, that leave your mind in such turmoil. And yet they aren’t seeking you out; you are the one seeking them.Suspendjudgmentabout them. And at once they will lie still, and you will be freed from fleeing and pursuing. 11.11

The others obey their own lead, follow their own impulses. Don’t be distracted. Keep walking. Follow your own nature, and follow Nature–along the road they share. 5.3 But the man motivated by desire, who is mastered by pleasure, seems somehow more self-indulgent, less manly in his sins. 2.10 Wash yourself clean. With simplicity, with humility, with indifference to everything but right and wrong. Care for other human beings. Follow God. 7.31 To live a good life: We have the potential for it If we can learn to be indifferent to what makes no difference. 11.16 An athlete in the greatest of all contests — the struggle not to beoverwhelmedby anything that happens. 3.4