The Meditations was among the favorite reading of Frederick the Great; a recent American president has claimed to reread it every few years. But it has attracted others too, from poets like Pope, Goethe, and Arnold to the southern planter William Alexander Percy, who observed in his autobiography that “there is left to each of us, no matter how far defeat pierces, the unassailable wintry kingdom of Marcus Aurelius.… It is not outside, but within, and when all is lost, it stands fast.”
Love that last line of quote
