from the Annotated Meditations

"Treat yourself with contempt, soul of mine—yes, contempt! The time has passed for you to respect yourself. For no one lives long, and this life of yours is all but spent while you dishonor yourself and make your happiness depend on the souls of others." (from "Meditations: The Annotated Edition" by "Marcus Aurelius, Robin Waterfield").

"He is urging himself to be a self-reliant moral agent. The Greek word psykhē is notoriously impossible to translate, because it corresponds with no single thing in English. It is the “soul,” the animating part of a person and the true self; it is the conscious self or “mind,” which thinks, remembers, feels, imagines, and so forth; sometimes it is “temperament” or “character.” It is a blanket term for the inner conscious and unconscious parts of a person, and hence is frequently distinguished from and coupled with the body. It is important to try to capture the capaciousness of the Greek term, and so I have mostly used “soul,” but sometimes “mind” (and occasionally “heart,” as in “wholehearted”). Marcus too uses “soul” and “mind” (dianoia, nous) interchangeably when he is talking about the rational faculty of the soul. He also occasionally substitutes “spirit” for “soul,” especially when he says that we are made of “body, spirit, and mind.” The human soul is made of pure pneuma, spirit, which is at the same time the stuff that permeates all creation and maintains it." (from "Meditations: The Annotated Edition" by "Marcus Aurelius, Robin Waterfield").