As surgeons keep their instruments and knives always at hand for cases requiring immediate treatment, so shouldst thou have thy thoughts ready to understand things divine and human, remembering in thy every act, even the smallest, how close is the bond that unites the two.
As surgeons keep their instruments and knives always at hand for cases requiring immediate treatment, so shouldst thou have thy thoughts ready to understand things divine and human, remembering in thy every act, even the smallest, how close is the bond that unites the two.
- Source
- Familiar Quotations, ninth edition (1905 printing)
Meditations. iii. 13.
Read the original context ↗ - Attribution confidence
- attributed · historical anthology
Preserved as printed; independently unverified. - Historical coordinate
- c. 150 AD · classical
author lifetime midpoint; not composition date. - Rights & edition
- Public domain (United States)
Translations and rights may differ elsewhere.
Provenance and licences ↗
Word-matched topics
The voice behind the words.
Listed in the author section of Bartlett’s ninth-edition anthology, in the linked 1905 printing. Dates reflect that historical edition and may differ from modern scholarship.
More from Marcus Aurelius Antoninus ↗