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Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

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136 MARCUS ANTONINUS BOOK<br />

heard your name, how many will at once forget<br />

it ! how<br />

very how<br />

many who perhaps applaud you now, will<br />

soon revile !<br />

or fame, or all else put <strong>to</strong>gether !<br />

valueless in sooth is memory,<br />

31 To vicissitudes caused from without, be imper-<br />

urbable : in actions whose cause lies with yourself,<br />

be just in other words, let impulse and act make<br />

social action their one end, and so fulfil the law<br />

<strong>of</strong> nature.<br />

32 The agitations that beset you are superfluous,<br />

and depend wholly upon judgments <strong>of</strong> your own.<br />

You can get rid <strong>of</strong> them, and in so doing will<br />

indeed live at large, by embracing the whole<br />

universe in your view and comprehending all<br />

eternity and imagining the swiftness <strong>of</strong> change in<br />

each particular, seeing how brief is the passage<br />

from birth <strong>to</strong> dissolution, birth with its unfathom-<br />

able before, dissolution with its infinite hereafter.<br />

33 All that you see will soon have perished, and<br />

those who have watched them perishing will soon<br />

perish themselves : the longest-lived<br />

with the babe who dies untimely.<br />

will be at one<br />

34 Look at their Inner Selves, the things they<br />

push for, the titles <strong>to</strong> their liking and respect.<br />

Conceive their souls stripped naked and then,

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