Do not act as if thou wert going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over thee. While thou livest, while it is in thy power, be good.
Genuine
Yes. In Meditations (180), Book 4, section 17.
Found word for word by program in the Greek original and in George Long’s English translation (1862).
- Work
- Meditations (Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν), 180
- Where
- Book 4, section 17
- Found at
- Paragraph 116 of the Greek text, 74 of the English
- Translation
- George Long, 1862
Researched by AI; checked by program against the full text on 31 October 2026. Editorial review: pending. How we check
On the page
Within ten days thou wilt seem a god to those to whom thou art now a beast and an ape, if thou wilt return to thy principles and the worship of reason.
Ἐντὸς δέκα ἡμερῶν θεὸς αὐτοῖς τούτοις δόξεις οἷς νῦν θηρίον καὶ πίθηκος, ἐὰν ἀνακάμψῃς ἐπὶ τὰ δόγματα καὶ τὸν σεβασμὸν τοῦ λόγου.
Do not act as if thou wert going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over thee. While thou livest, while it is in thy power, be good.
Μὴ ὡς μύρια μέλλων ἔτη ζῆν. τὸ χρεὼν ἐπήρτηται· ἕως ζῇς, ἕως ἔξεστιν, ἀγαθὸς γενοῦ.
How much trouble he avoids who does not look to see what his neighbour says or does or thinks, but only to what he does himself, that it may be just and pure; or as Agathon says, look not round at the depraved morals of others, but run straight along the line without deviating from it.
Ὅσην εὐσχολίαν κερδαίνει ὁ μὴ βλέπων τί ὁ πλησίον εἶπεν ἢ ἔπραξεν ἢ διενοήθη, ἀλλὰ μόνον τί αὐτὸς ποιεῖ, ἵνα αὐτὸ τοῦτο δίκαιον ᾖ καὶ ὅσιον ἢ † κατὰ τὸν ἀγαθὸν· μὴ μέλαν ἦθος περιβλέπεσθαι, ἀλλʼ ἐπὶ τῆς γραμμῆς τρέχειν ὀρθόν, μὴ διερριμμένον.
He who has a vehement desire for posthumous fame does not consider that every one of those who remember him will himself also die very soon; then again also they who have succeeded them, until the whole remembrance shall have been extinguished as it is transmitted through men who foolishly admire and perish. […]
Ὁ περὶ τὴν ὑστεροφημίαν ἐπτοημένος οὐ φαντάζεται ὅτι ἕκαστος τῶν μεμνημένων αὐτοῦ τάχιστα καὶ αὐτὸς ἀποθανεῖται· εἶτα πάλιν ὁ ἐκεῖνον διαδεξάμενος, μέχρι καὶ πᾶσα ἡ μνήμη ἀποσβῇ διὰ ἁπτομένων καὶ σβεννυμένων προιοῦσα. ὑπόθου δ᾽, ὅτι καὶ ἀθάνατοι μὲν οἱ μεμνησόμενοι, ἀθάνατος δὲ ἡ μνήμη· τί οὖν τοῦτο πρὸς σέ; καὶ οὐ λέγω, ὅτι οὐδὲν πρὸς τὸν τεθνηκότα, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὸν ζῶντα τί ὁ ἔπαινος, πλὴν ἄρα δι’ οἰκονομίαν τινά; πάρες γὰρ νῦν ἀκαίρως τὴν φυσικὴν δόσιν ἄλλου τινὸς ἐχομένην λόγου λοιπόν.
The scene
A complete short entry in Marcus’s notebook. Before it he reminds himself that within ten days he will seem a god to those who now think him a beast, if he returns to his principles; after it, how much trouble a man avoids who looks only to what he does himself, not to what his neighbour says or does.
What it means
Death is always near, so do not postpone being good: do it now, while you live and can.
Often misread
It is sometimes used as a ‘live for today’ call to enjoy life before it ends. Marcus’s imperative is moral: ‘be good’, not ‘enjoy yourself’.
Also shared as
- Another public-domain translationBe not as one that hath ten thousand years to live; death is nigh at hand: while thou livest, while thou hast time, be good. M. H. Morgan’s translation, made for John Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 9th edition (Boston: Little, Brown, copyright 1891), p. 751 (“Translated by M. H. Morgan, Ph. D., of Harvard University”, p. 749), and kept in later editions (10th ed., 1919). Checked on the page images of the 1892 printing (archive.org famil00bart, leaves 762 and 764). Where it was seen
Topics
Related quotes
- No longer talk at all about the kind of man that a good man ought to be, but be such.
- While it is put off, life runs past. Seneca the Younger
- It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live. (paraphrase)
- We do not have a very short time assigned to us, but we lose a great deal of it Seneca the Younger
- Dig within. Within is the wellspring of good; and it will ever bubble up, if you will ever dig. (paraphrase)
Sources
- standardebooks.org/ebooks/marcus-aurelius/meditations/george-long/text/single-page (George Long translation, first published 1862; corpus meditations.en.txt, line 74)
- cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/PerseusDL/canonical-greekLit@70427323b61267cdcd0256b9b02009c23392de07/data/tlg0562/tlg001/tlg0562.tlg001.perseus-grc2.xml (Greek text, book 4, chapter 17; corpus meditations.el.txt, line 116)
- en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Marcus_Aurelius
Cite it
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (180), Book 4, section 17, translated by George Long (1862). Checked at Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/do-not-act-as-if-you-were-going-to-live-ten-thousand-years/ (31 October 2026).
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