Marcus Aurelius · 121–180 CE
Meditations 8.20 — Marcus Aurelius
Translation by George Long (1862)
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.20
Nature has had regard in everything no less to the end than to the beginning and the continuance, just like the man who throws up a ball. What good is it then for the ball to be thrown up, or harm for it to come down, or even to have fallen? And what good is it to the bubble while it holds together, or what harm when it is burst? The same may be said of a light also.
Cite this passage
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.20, tr. George Long (1862)
https://whatwouldstoicsdo.com/passage/meditations/8.20
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, tr. George Long (1862). Text: Standard Ebooks (CC0). Sources and licences
In plain English
AI-written notesNature plans the ending as carefully as the beginning, like someone tossing a ball into the air. The ball gains nothing by rising and loses nothing by falling, nor does a bubble by lasting or bursting, so the end of a life is no more a harm than its start was a benefit.
Older wording
- “continuance”
- — the middle part, how long something lasts
Themes and situations
- Death and mortality
- Change and impermanence
- Acceptance and fate
- Nature and the cosmos
- Fear of death
- Getting older
Quote cards
The opening line of this passage as an image, with its citation — for sharing or keeping.