Meditations IV.26

Hast thou looked on that side of the picture? Look now on this! Fret not thyself; study to be simple.⁴³ Does a man do wrong? The wrong rests with him.⁴⁴ Has something befallen thee? It is well. Everything that befalls was from the beginning destined and spun⁴⁵ for thee as thy share out of the Whole. In a word, life is short.⁴⁶ Make profit of the present by right reasoning and justice. In thy relaxation be sober.

• 43.iv. 37; ix. 37. Dio’s Roman History (71. 34 §§ 4, 5) says of Marcus οὐδὲν προσποίητον εἶχε, and he is a far better authority than Capitolinus’s Life of Marcus xxix. 6 and xx. 1–4.

  The historian Dio’s Greek, in translation: “he had nothing affected about him.”

• 44.See ix. 4, 38.
• 45.See iii. 11; iv. 34.
• 46.See iv. 17.