Meditations

by Marcus Aurelius

Which brings a double satisfaction: to do less, better.

Because most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time, and more tranquillity. Ask yourself at every moment, “Is this necessary?”

But we need to eliminate unnecessary assumptions as well. To eliminate the unnecessary actions that follow.

Love this. Why are you doing the action in the first place? Investigate that

Life is short. That’s all there is to say. Get what you can from the present—thoughtfully, justly.

Love the discipline you know, and let it support you. Entrust everything willingly to the gods, and then make your way through life—no one’s master and no one’s slave.

But most of all, run through the list of those you knew yourself. Those who worked in vain, who failed to do what they should have—what they should have remained fixed on and found satisfaction in.

key point to bear in mind: The value of attentiveness varies in proportion to its object. You’re better off not giving the small things more time than they deserve.

Everything fades so quickly, turns into legend, and soon oblivion covers it. And those are the ones who shone. The rest—“unknown, unasked-for” a minute after death. What is “eternal” fame? Emptiness. Then what should we work for? Only this: proper understanding; unselfish action; truthful speech.

Time is a river, a violent current of events, glimpsed once and already carried past us, and another follows and is gone.

Suppose that a god announced that you were going to die tomorrow “or the day after.” Unless you were a complete coward you wouldn’t kick up a fuss about which day it was—what difference could it make? Now recognize that the difference between years from now and tomorrow is just as small.

To be like the rock that the waves keep crashing over. It stands unmoved and the raging of the sea falls still around it.

“Not so quick on the uptake.” And you need to work on that as well—that slowness. Not something to be ignored, let alone to prize.

Not to feel exasperated, or defeated, or despondent because your days aren’t packed with wise and moral actions. But to get back up when you fail, to celebrate behaving like a human—however imperfectly—and fully embrace the pursuit that you’ve embarked on.

I can keep from doing anything that God and my own spirit don’t approve. No one can force me to.

The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts.

Anywhere you can lead your life, you can lead a good one.

In a sense, people are our proper occupation. Our job is to do them good and put up with them.

Our actions may be impeded by them, but there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.

Existence flows past us like a river: the “what” is in constant flux, the “why” has a thousand variations. Nothing is stable, not even what’s right here. The infinity of past and future gapes before us—a chasm whose depths we cannot see.

Remember: Matter. How tiny your share of it. Time. How brief and fleeting your allotment of it. Fate. How small a role you play in it.

King of the known world telling himself how insignificant he is. Remarkable

The mind is the ruler of the soul.

Plato

Neither player-king nor prostitute.

lol what in the world did this mean?

Soon you’ll be ashes, or bones. A mere name, at most—and even that is just a sound, an echo. The things we want in life are empty, stale, and trivial.

be tolerant with others and strict with yourself.

You can lead an untroubled life provided you can grow, can think and act systematically.

To locate goodness in thinking and doing the right thing, and to limit your desires to that.

Not to be overwhelmed by what you imagine, but just do what you can and should.

Don’t let the fact that you can wish for something set the bar for what you must do. Start where you are, but keep hopes high

But true good fortune is what you make for yourself. Good fortune: good character, good intentions, and good actions.

We make our own luck

Just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn’t matter.

If you had a stepmother and a real mother, you would pay your respects to your stepmother, yes … but it’s your real mother you’d go home to. The court … and philosophy: Keep returning to it, to rest in its embrace. It’s all that makes the court—and you—endurable.

Psalm 127. If philosophy is not in it, it is pointless

Pride is a master of deception: when you think you’re occupied in the weightiest business, that’s when he has you in his spell.

But those who revere that other mind—the one we all share, as humans and as citizens—aren’t interested in other things. Their focus is on the state of their own minds—to avoid all selfishness and illogic, and to work with others to achieve that goal.

And if you can’t stop prizing a lot of other things? Then you’ll never be free—free, independent, imperturbable. Because you’ll always be envious and jealous, afraid that people might come and take it all away from you.

The elements move upward, downward, in all directions. The motion of virtue is different—deeper. It moves at a steady pace on a road hard to discern, and always forward.

If anyone can refute me—show me I’m making a mistake or looking at things from the wrong perspective—I’ll gladly change. It’s the truth I’m after, and the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance.

Fight to be the person philosophy tried to make you.

Revere the gods; watch over human beings. Our lives are short. The only rewards of our existence here are an unstained character and unselfish acts.

Take Antoninus as your model, always. His energy in doing what was rational … his steadiness in any situation … his sense of reverence … his calm expression … his gentleness … his modesty … his eagerness to grasp things. And how he never let things go before he was sure he had examined them thoroughly, understood them perfectly … the way he put up with unfair criticism, without returning it … how he couldn’t be hurried … how he wouldn’t listen to informers … how reliable he was as a judge of character, and of actions … not prone to backbiting, or cowardice, or jealousy, or empty rhetoric … content with the basics—in living quarters, bedding, clothes, food, servants … how hard he worked, how much he put up with … his ability to work straight through till dusk—because of his simple diet (he didn’t even need to relieve himself, ex...

So that when your time comes, your conscience will be...

It’s normal to feel pain in your hands and feet, if you’re using your feet as feet and your hands as hands. And for a human being to feel stress is normal—if he’s living a normal human life. And if it’s normal, how can it be bad?

This is einteresting. Normalizing stress. Some is good, sure. But where is the line? That’s the challenge. You would only stress your body to a certain point over a certain period of time

Asia and Europe: distant recesses of the universe. The ocean: a drop of water. Mount Athos: a molehill. The present: a split second in eternity. Minuscule, transitory, insignificant.

This was all a forest a thousand years ago

Much of our bad behavior stems from trying to apply those criteria. If we limited “good” and “bad” to our own actions, we’d have no call to challenge God, or to treat other people as enemies.

My city and state are Rome—as Antoninus. But as a human being? The world. So for me, “good” can only mean what’s good for both communities.

Keep this constantly in mind: that all sorts of people have died—all professions, all nationalities.

When you need encouragement, think of the qualities the people around you have: this one’s energy, that one’s modesty, another’s generosity, and so on. Nothing is as encouraging as when virtues are visibly embodied in the people around us, when we’re practically showered with them.

Do your best to convince them. But act on your own, if justice requires it. If met with force, then fall back on acceptance and peaceability. Use the setback to practice other virtues. Remember that our efforts are subject to circumstances; you weren’t aiming to do the impossible. —Aiming to do what, then? To try. And you succeeded. What you set out to do is accomplished.

LOVE this

our own worth is measured by what we devote our energy to.

Is my intellect up to this? If so, then I’ll put it to work, like a tool provided by nature. And if it isn’t, then I’ll turn the job over to someone who can do better—unless I have no choice. Or I do the best I can with it, and collaborate with whoever can make use of it, to do what the community needs done. Because whatever I do—alone or with others—can aim at one thing only: what squares with those requirements.

So many who were remembered already forgotten, and those who remembered them long gone.

Straight, not straightened.

Love this. So simple, yet contains everything