“Do what nature now requires. Set thyself in motion, if it is in thy power, and do not look about thee to see if any one will observe it; nor yet expect Plato's Republic: but be content if the smallest thing goes on well, and consider such an event to be no small matter.”

— Marcus Aurelius, book Meditations

Forward, as occasion offers. Never look round to see whether any shall note it…. Be satisfied with success in even the smallest matter, and think that even such a result is no trifle.
IX, 29
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book IX

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Marcus Aurelius400

Emperor of Ancient Rome 121–180

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“Consider thyself to be dead, and to have completed thy life up to the present time; and live according to nature the remainder which is allowed thee.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

VII, 56
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VII

“Since the science of nature is conversant with magnitudes, motion, and time, each of which must necessarily be either infinite or finite…[we] should speculate the infinite, and consider whether it is or not; and if it is what it is. …[A]ll those who appear to have touched on a philosophy of this kind… consider it as a certain principle of beings. Some, indeed, as the Pythagoreans and Plato, consider it, per se, not as being an accident to any thing else, but as having an essential subsistence… the Pythagoreans… consider the infinite as subsisting in sensibles; for they do not make number to be separate; and they assert that what is beyond the heavens is infinite; but Plato says that beyond the heavens there is not any body, nor ideas, because these are no where: he affirms, however, that the infinite is both in sensibles, and in ideas. …Plato establishes two infinities, viz. the great and the small.”

Aristotle book Physics

Book III, Ch. IV, pp. 150-152.
Physics

“Spirit: Do not be deceived by sophists and half philosophers; things do not appear to thee by means of any representatives. Of the thing that exists, and that can exist, thou art conscious immediately; thou, thyself, art that of which thou art conscious. By a fundamental law of thy being thou art thus presented to thyself, and thrown out of thyself.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 53
The Vocation of Man (1800), Knowledge

“Teach me, my God and King,
In all things thee to see
And what I do in any thing,
To do it as for thee..”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Source: The Temple (1633), The Elixir, Lines 1-4

“Go; say not in thy heart, And what then were it accomplished,
Were the wild impulse allayed, what were the use or the good!
Go, when the instinct is stilled, and when the deed is accomplished,
What thou bast done and shalt do, shall be declared to thee then.
Go with the sun and the stars, and yet evermore in thy spirit
Say to thyself: It is good: yet is there better than it.
This that I see is not all, and this that I do is but little;
Nevertheless it is good, though there is better than it.”

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861) English poet

Hope Evermore and Believe! http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/C/CloughArthurHugh/verse/poemsproseremains/hopeevermore.html, st. 2 (written 1853, published 1862).

“And Thee, across the harbor, silver-paced
As though the sun took step of thee, yet left
Some motion ever unspent in thy stride,
Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!”

Hart Crane book The Bridge

The Bridge. In The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, by Richard Ellmann and Robert O'Clair (1988)

“In life's small things be resolute and great
To keep thy muscle trained: know'st thou when Fate
Thy measure takes, or when she'll say to thee,
"I find thee worthy; do this deed for me?"”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

Epigram.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“3082. To what Purpose shouldest thou seek great Things for thyself in the World? or having obtained them, prize them at any considerable Rate? or value thyself upon them? seeing thou knowest not, but this Night thy Soul may be required of thee, when thou shalt be divested of them all. 'Twould be as vain and unreasonable, as for a Traveler, that is to stay at his Inn but for a night, to take great Thought and Pains about furnishing and adorning his Chamber, which the next Morning he must leave to the next Comer.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727)

“Thou cam'st not to thy place by accident,
It is the very place God meant for thee;
And should'st thou there small room for action see,
Do not for this give room for discontent.”

Richard Chenevix Trench (1807–1886) Irish bishop

Sonnet, The Story of Justin Martyr and Other Poems; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 190-92.

“With Thee in shady solitudes I walk,
With Thee in busy, crowded cities talk;
In every creature own Thy forming power,
In each event Thy providence adore.”

Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743–1825) English author

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 433.

“Do what nature now requires. Set thyself in motion, if it is in thy power, and do not look about thee to see if any one will observe it; nor yet expect Plato's Republic: but be content if the smallest thing goes on well, and consider such an event to be no small matter.”

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