miguel-se7

We all need some help at some point in our lives, whether to motivate us to accomplish a task at hand, to do the right thing or to overcome some adversity. During these times, we can look out to philosophy as a friend that is there whenever you need it, a friend that calls for you to be better. As Seneca would say, philosophy offers counsel.

For our first post we will focus on Marcus Aurelius, the last of the rulers known as the Five Good Emperors and the writer of Meditations. As an emperor, Marcus Aurelius faced a lot of difficult decisions, that's why he wrote his meditations, to remind himself how he should act, to strengthen his will and to help him live as virtue demanded of him. So today, consider the following quotes from Marcus Aurelius to help you as you struggle with any problem that may be at hand:

“You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”

“So remember this principle when something threatens to cause you pain: the thing itself was no misfortune at all; to endure it and prevail is great good fortune.”

“If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed.”

“Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.”

“Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”

“Just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn't matter. Cold or warm. Tired or well-rested. Despised or honored. Dying...or busy with other assignments. Because dying, too, is one of our assignments in life. There as well: To do what needs doing.”

“When people injure you, ask yourself what good or harm they thought would come of it. If you understand that, you'll feel sympathy rather than outrage or anger. Your sense of good and evil may be the same as theirs, or near it, in which case you have to excuse them. Or your sense of good and evil may differ from theirs. In which case they're misguided and deserve your compassion. Is that so hard?”

“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”

“Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?”

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”

“Men seek retreats for themselves – in the country, by the sea, in the hills – and you yourself are particularly prone to this yearning. But all this is quite unphilosophic, when it is open to you, at any time you want, to retreat into yourself. No retreat offers someone more quiet and relaxation than that into his own mind, especially if he can dip into thoughts there which put him at immediate and complete ease: and by ease I simply mean a well-ordered life. So constantly give yourself this retreat, and renew yourself”

“The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.”

“I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.”

“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 can't tell 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 and 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 relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural.”

This is just a small sample of what is found on Meditations, which you can download for free here. I am sure that there are plenty of passages that will resonate with you if you read it. If you enjoyed this post feel free to retweet this and help donate to charity.

See below for further recommendations on Stoic philosophy

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