Though you break your heart, men will go on as before.

Marcus Aurelius (121–180 CE), Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher, wrote his private notes—later known as the Meditations—during military campaigns and amid the pressures of rule, illness, and war. The work repeatedly returns to the Stoic discipline of separating what is “up to us” (our judgments and actions) from what is not (other people’s opinions and the world’s events). The sentiment in this line fits that setting: a ruler confronting grief, disappointment, and the indifference of public life, reminding himself that personal anguish does not halt the ordinary motion of society. It is framed as self-admonition rather than a public maxim.

The line underscores a Stoic insight about the world’s indifference to individual suffering: even profound private pain rarely alters the course of other people’s lives. Read as counsel, it discourages self-dramatization and the expectation that one’s grief will be recognized or rewarded. Instead, it urges resilience and a return to what one can govern—one’s own reasoned response, duties, and character. The sting of the thought is also its liberation: if others “go on as before,” then one need not anchor one’s recovery to their attention or sympathy. Meaning and steadiness must be generated internally, not sought in external validation.