Q0113

Marcus Aurelius

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

Depart then in peace; the one who releases you is also at peace.
Thinker Marcus Aurelius
School Stoicism
Source Meditations XII.36
Theme Death
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Meditations XII.36, within the tradition of Stoicism. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of death, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Marcus Aurelius's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Marcus Aurelius. (n.d.). Depart then in peace; the one who releases you is also at peace. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0113

MLA: Marcus Aurelius. “Depart then in peace; the one who releases….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0113.

Chicago: Marcus Aurelius. “Depart then in peace; the one who releases….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0113.

Same thinker

More from Marcus Aurelius

  1. Your mind will take the shape of what you frequently hold in thought, for the soul is dyed by its impressions.
  2. The universe is change; life is opinion.
  3. Begin the morning by saying to yourself: Today I shall meet the busybody, the ungrateful, the arrogant…
  4. Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.
  5. If you are distressed by anything external, it is not the thing itself that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it.

All quotations by Marcus Aurelius

Same theme

More on death

  1. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  2. He who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.
  3. Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.
  4. Therefore death is nothing to us, and does not concern us at all.
  5. To philosophize is to learn how to die.

Browse the death theme