Marcus Aurelius · 121–180 CE
Meditations 9.2 — Marcus Aurelius
Translation by George Long (1862)
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 9.2
It would be a man’s happiest lot to depart from mankind without having had any taste of lying and hypocrisy and luxury and pride. However to breathe out one’s life when a man has had enough of these things is the next best voyage, as the saying is. Hast thou determined to abide with vice, and has not experience yet induced thee to fly from this pestilence? For the destruction of the understanding is a pestilence, much more indeed than any such corruption and change of this atmosphere which surrounds us. For this corruption is a pestilence of animals so far as they are animals; but the other is a pestilence of men so far as they are men.
Cite this passage
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 9.2, tr. George Long (1862)
https://whatwouldstoicsdo.com/passage/meditations/9.2
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, tr. George Long (1862). Text: Standard Ebooks (CC0). Sources and licences
In plain English
AI-written notesThe best life would pass without ever tasting dishonesty, hypocrisy, luxury or arrogance, and the next best is to depart once you have had enough of them. Staying on in vice when experience should have taught you to flee it is a kind of plague, and a worse one than any disease of the air, because it ruins your judgement.
Older wording
- “pestilence”
- — a deadly plague or infection
- “voyage”
- — journey, here a way of departing from life
Themes and situations
- Virtue and character
- Death and mortality