Stoic Snippets 178

If you are pained by any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it. 

And it is in your power to wipe out this judgment now. 

But if anything in your own disposition gives you pain, who hinders you from correcting your opinion? 

And even if you are pained because you are not doing some particular thing which seems to you to be right, why do you not rather act than complain? 

"But some insuperable obstacle is in the way!" 

Do not be grieved then, for the cause of its not being done depends not on you. 

"But it is not worthwhile to live, if this cannot be done!" 

Take your departure then from life contentedly, just as he dies who is in full activity, and well pleased too with the things which are obstacles. 

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.47 

IMAGE: Jules-Élie Delaunay, The Plague in Rome (1869)