marcus aurelius lines with the citation attached

everyone quotes Meditations with no book.section, so half of what's floating around is invented or mistranslated. these are Hays translation, checked against the text.

When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly.

2.1, Hays translation. most quoted line in the whole book and it's right there on page one of book two

There is a limit to the time assigned you, and if you don't use it to free yourself it will be gone and never return.

2.4

You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.

2.11 (check the attribution) - it gets cut down and posted with no cite constantly, this is the actual Hays phrasing

An athlete in the greatest of all contests, the struggle not to be overwhelmed by anything that happens.

3.4

Each of us lives only now, this brief instant.

3.10. reread this one when a day feels like it's dragging

Nowhere you can go is more peaceful, more free of interruptions, than your own soul.

4.4

Choose not to be harmed and you won't feel harmed. Don't feel harmed and you haven't been.

4.7 - the logic is circular if you sit with it too long. don't

You have a mind? Yes. Well, why not use it?

4.13

Not to live as if you had endless years ahead of you. Death overshadows you. While you're alive and able, be good.

4.17. heavier in context than it looks pulled out like this

At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: I have to go to work, as a human being.

5.1, full paragraph is longer and better, this is just the opener

The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.

5.20, the one every productivity account steals with no citation at all

I do what is mine to do; the rest doesn't disturb me.

6.22

I can control my thoughts as necessary; then how can I be troubled?

7.2. reread this one - the whole book is basically a longer version of this sentence

Or start a list of your own. Free, it takes a minute.

Related lists

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elmore leonard's 10 rules of writing (2001)

the Joel test (2000)