• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

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• "Many grains of incense on the same altar. One falls to ash first, another later: no difference."
• "There is a river of creation, and time is a violent stream. As soon as one thing comes into sight, it is swept past and another is carried down: it too will be taken on its way."
• "Disgraceful if, in this life where your body does not fail, your soul should fail you first."
• "Sober up, recall yourself, shake off sleep once more: realize they were mere dreams that troubled you, and now that you are awake again look on these things as you would have looked on a dream."
• "All things come from that other world, taking their start from that universal governing reason, or in consequence of it. So even the lion's gaping jaws, poison, every kind of mischief are, like thorns or bogs, consequential products of that which is noble and lovely."
• "Imagine you were now dead, or had not lived before this moment. Now view the rest of your life as a bonus, and live it as nature directs."
• "Love only what falls your way and is fated for you. What could suit you more than that?"
• "He who fears death fears either unconsciousness or another sort of consciousness. Now if you will no longer be conscious you will not be conscious either of anything bad. If you are to take on a different consciousness, you will be a different being and life will not cease."
• "All things are in a process of change. You yourself are subject to constant alteration and gradual decay. So too is the whole universe."
• "You should leave another's wrong where it lies."
• "Calculated honesty is a stiletto. There is nothing more degrading than the friendship of wolves: avoid that above all. The good, honest, kindly man has it in his eyes, and you cannot mistake him."
• "-- and begin at long last to be a human being, while life remains."
• "And the heart within me laughed."
• "If it is not right, don't do it: if it is not true, don't say it."