"There is nothing happens to any person but what was in his power to go through with"
About this Quote
Stoic grit, sharpened into a line that refuses to comfort you with excuses. Marcus Aurelius isn’t offering a mystical guarantee that life will be fair; he’s narrowing the definition of “power” to something brutally actionable: endurance. “Nothing happens” isn’t denial of catastrophe or cruelty. It’s an insistence that whatever arrives - illness, betrayal, political chaos, grief - is not, by itself, proof of your defeat. The only territory that remains yours is the capacity to bear it without surrendering your governing faculty.
The phrasing is doing quiet rhetorical work. “In his power” sounds like control, but Marcus immediately limits it with “to go through with.” Not to prevent, not to rewrite, not to win. To pass through. That shift is the subtext: stop bargaining with reality and start training for contact with it. The line smuggles in a moral challenge as well. If you can “go through,” then flailing, self-pity, and vindictiveness start looking less like inevitabilities and more like choices - temptations you can refuse.
Context matters: this is a Roman emperor writing in private notes while running an empire under strain, often amid war and plague, with the daily knowledge that power can’t keep bodies safe or politics stable. His soldier’s worldview shows: you don’t get to pick the battlefield; you get to decide whether you break formation. The intent is disciplinary, almost tactical - a way to convert helplessness into a single, repeatable command: endure with dignity, and you remain free in the one place no enemy can occupy.
The phrasing is doing quiet rhetorical work. “In his power” sounds like control, but Marcus immediately limits it with “to go through with.” Not to prevent, not to rewrite, not to win. To pass through. That shift is the subtext: stop bargaining with reality and start training for contact with it. The line smuggles in a moral challenge as well. If you can “go through,” then flailing, self-pity, and vindictiveness start looking less like inevitabilities and more like choices - temptations you can refuse.
Context matters: this is a Roman emperor writing in private notes while running an empire under strain, often amid war and plague, with the daily knowledge that power can’t keep bodies safe or politics stable. His soldier’s worldview shows: you don’t get to pick the battlefield; you get to decide whether you break formation. The intent is disciplinary, almost tactical - a way to convert helplessness into a single, repeatable command: endure with dignity, and you remain free in the one place no enemy can occupy.
Quote Details
| Topic | Free Will & Fate |
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