# Meditations  ## Metadata - Author: [[Marcus Aurelius and Gregory Hays]] - Full Title: Meditations - Category: #western-philosophy ## Highlights - States will never be happy until rulers become philosophers or philosophers become rulers. —PLATO, The Republic ([Location 6](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=6)) - Logos operates both in individuals and in the universe as a whole. In individuals it is the faculty of reason. On a cosmic level it is the rational principle that governs the organization of the universe.1 In this sense it is synonymous with “nature,” “Providence,” or “God.” ([Location 207](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=207)) - Pneuma is the power—the vital breath—that animates animals and humans. ([Location 224](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=224)) - Stoicism has even been described, not altogether unfairly, as the real religion of upper-class Romans. ([Location 253](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=253)) - As human beings we are part of nature, and our duty is to accommodate ourselves to its demands and requirements—“to live as nature requires,” as Marcus often puts it. ([Location 343](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=343)) - Cynicism. The Cynics, of whom the first and most notorious was the irascible Diogenes of Sinope, were united less by doctrine than by a common attitude, namely their contempt for societal institutions and a desire for a life more in accord with nature. ([Location 440](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=440)) - All things change or pass away, perish and are forgotten. This is the burden of several of the thought exercises that Marcus sets himself: ([Location 591](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=591)) - Marcus does not offer us a means of achieving happiness, but only a means of resisting pain. The Stoicism of the Meditations is fundamentally a defensive philosophy; it is noteworthy how many military images recur, from references to the soul as being “posted” or “stationed” to the famous image of the mind as an invulnerable fortress ([Location 645](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=645)) - When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own—not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions. ([Location 1024](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1024)) - Everyone gets one life. Yours is almost used up, and instead of treating yourself with respect, you have entrusted your own happiness to the souls of others. ([Location 1051](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1051)) - People who labor all their lives but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse toward are wasting their time—even when hard at work. ([Location 1054](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1054)) - You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think. ([Location 1072](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1072))