# Meditations  ## Metadata - Author: Marcus Aurelius and Gregory Hays - Full Title: Meditations - Category: #books ## 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)) - Of the doctrines central to the Stoic worldview, perhaps the most important is the unwavering conviction that the world is organized in a rational and coherent way. ([Location 202](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=202)) - 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)) - All events are determined by the logos, and follow in an unbreakable chain of cause and effect. Stoicism is thus from the outset a deterministic system that appears to leave no room for human free will or moral responsibility. In reality the Stoics were reluctant to accept such an arrangement, and attempted to get around the difficulty by defining free will as a voluntary accommodation to what is in any case inevitable. ([Location 212](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=212)) - According to this theory, man is like a dog tied to a moving wagon. If the dog refuses to run along with the wagon he will be dragged by it, yet the choice remains his: to run or be dragged. In the same way, humans are responsible for their choices and actions, even though these have been anticipated by the logos and form part of its plan. ([Location 215](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=215)) - 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)) - Chrysippus and his followers had divided knowledge into three areas: logic, physics and ethics, concerned, respectively, with the nature of knowledge, the structure of the physical world and the proper role of human beings in that world. ([Location 297](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=297)) - The questions that the Meditations tries to answer are primarily metaphysical and ethical ones: Why are we here? How should we live our lives? How can we ensure that we do what is right? How can we protect ourselves against the stresses and pressures of daily life? How should we deal with pain and misfortune? How can we live with the knowledge that someday we will no longer exist? ([Location 309](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=309)) - The discipline of perception requires that we maintain absolute objectivity of thought: that we see things dispassionately for what they are. ([Location 317](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=317)) - It is, in other words, not objects and events but the interpretations we place on them that are the problem. Our duty is therefore to exercise stringent control over the faculty of perception, with the aim of protecting our mind from error. ([Location 334](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=334)) - The second discipline, that of action, relates to our relationship with other people. ([Location 336](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=336)) - 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. To do this we must make proper use of the logos we have been allotted, and perform as best we can the functions assigned us in the master plan of the larger, cosmic logos, of which it is a part. This requires not merely passive acquiescence in what happens, but active cooperation with the world, with fate and, above all, with other human beings. ([Location 343](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=343)) - The third discipline, the discipline of will, is in a sense the counterpart to the second, the discipline of action. The latter governs our approach to the things in our control, those that we do; the discipline of will governs our attitude to things that are not within our control, those that we have done to us (by others or by nature). ([Location 359](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=359)) - Everywhere, at each moment, you have the option: • to accept this event with humility [will]; • to treat this person as he should be treated [action]; • to approach this thought with care, so that nothing irrational creeps in [perception]. ([Location 378](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=378)) - 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)) - The Stoic world is ordered to the nth degree; the Epicurean universe is random, the product of the haphazard conjunctions of billions of atoms. ([Location 449](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=449)) - To try to extract a sustained and coherent argument from the Meditations as a whole would be an unprofitable exercise. It is simply not that kind of work. ([Location 581](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=581)) - All things change or pass away, perish and are forgotten. This is the burden of several of the thought exercises that Marcus sets himself: to think of the court of Augustus (8.31), of the age of Vespasian or Trajan (4.32), the great philosophers and thinkers of the past (6.47)—all now dust and ashes. ([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)) - And to see clearly, from his example, that a man can show both strength and flexibility. ([Location 893](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=893)) - His patience in teaching. And to have seen someone who clearly viewed his expertise and ability as a teacher as the humblest of virtues. ([Location 894](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=894)) - Not to be constantly correcting people, and in particular not to jump on them whenever they make an error of usage or a grammatical mistake or mispronounce something, but just answer their question or add another example, or debate the issue itself (not their phrasing), or make some other contribution to the discussion—and insert the right expression, unobtrusively. ([Location 907](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=907)) - Always sober, always steady, and never vulgar or a prey to fads. ([Location 956](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=956)) - his willingness to yield the floor to experts—in oratory, law, psychology, whatever—and to support them energetically, so that each of them could fulfill his potential. ([Location 966](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=966)) - Note: Good administration is the fulfillment of your potential via the expertise of others - That he respected tradition without needing to constantly congratulate himself for Safeguarding Our Traditional Values. ([Location 968](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=968)) - 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)) - Concentrate every minute like a Roman—like a man—on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can—if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable. You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life? If you can manage this, that’s all even the gods can ask of you. ([Location 1045](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1045)) - 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)) - Do external things distract you? Then make time for yourself to learn something worthwhile; stop letting yourself be pulled in all directions. But make sure you guard against the other kind of confusion. 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 1053](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1053)) - 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)) - In comparing sins (the way people do) Theophrastus says that the ones committed out of desire are worse than the ones committed out of anger: which is good philosophy. The angry man seems to turn his back on reason out of a kind of pain and inner convulsion. But the man motivated by desire, who is mastered by pleasure, seems somehow more self-indulgent, less manly in his sins. ([Location 1066](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1066)) - 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)) - But death and life, success and failure, pain and pleasure, wealth and poverty, all these happen to good and bad alike, and they are neither noble nor shameful—and hence neither good nor bad. ([Location 1078](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1078)) - If you look at them in isolation there’s nothing beautiful about them, and yet by supplementing nature they enrich it and draw us in. And anyone with a feeling for nature—a deeper sensitivity—will find it all gives pleasure. Even what seems inadvertent. ([Location 1151](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1151)) - You boarded, you set sail, you’ve made the passage. Time to disembark. If it’s for another life, well, there’s nowhere without gods on that side either. If to nothingness, then you no longer have to put up with pain and pleasure, or go on dancing attendance on this battered crate, your body—so much inferior to that which serves it. One is mind and spirit, the other earth and garbage. ([Location 1160](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1160)) - Don’t waste the rest of your time here worrying about other people—unless it affects the common good. It will keep you from doing anything useful. You’ll be too preoccupied with what so-and-so is doing, and why, and what they’re saying, and what they’re thinking, and what they’re up to, and all the other things that throw you off and keep you from focusing on your own mind. ([Location 1165](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1165)) - He keeps in mind that all rational things are related, and that to care for all human beings is part of being human. Which doesn’t mean we have to share their opinions. We should listen only to those whose lives conform to nature. And the others? He bears in mind what sort of people they are—both at home and abroad, by night as well as day—and who they spend their time with. And he cares nothing for their praise—men who can’t even meet their own standards. ([Location 1180](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1180)) - Never regard something as doing you good if it makes you betray a trust, or lose your sense of shame, or makes you show hatred, suspicion, ill will, or hypocrisy, or a desire for things best done behind closed doors. ([Location 1207](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1207)) - Nothing is so conducive to spiritual growth as this capacity for logical and accurate analysis of everything that happens to us. ([Location 1227](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1227)) - Doctors keep their scalpels and other instruments handy, for emergencies. Keep your philosophy ready too—ready to understand heaven and earth. In everything you do, even the smallest thing, remember the chain that links them. Nothing earthly succeeds by ignoring heaven, nothing heavenly by ignoring the earth. ([Location 1243](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1243)) - People try to get away from it all—to the country, to the beach, to the mountains. You always wish that you could too. Which is idiotic: you can get away from it anytime you like. By going within. Nowhere you can go is more peaceful—more free of interruptions—than your own soul. ([Location 1278](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1278)) - Or is it your reputation that’s bothering you? But look at how soon we’re all forgotten. The abyss of endless time that swallows it all. The emptiness of all those applauding hands. The people who praise us—how capricious they are, how arbitrary. And the tiny region in which it all takes place. The whole earth a point in space—and most of it uninhabited. How many people there will be to admire you, and who they are. ([Location 1296](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1296)) - So keep this refuge in mind: the back roads of your self. Above all, no strain and no stress. Be straightforward. Look at things like a man, like a human being, like a citizen, like a mortal. And among the things you turn to, these two:   i. That things have no hold on the soul. They stand there unmoving, outside it. Disturbance comes only from within—from our own perceptions.  ii. That everything you see will soon alter and cease to exist. Think of how many changes you’ve already seen. “The world is nothing but change. Our life is only perception.” ([Location 1299](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1299)) - That sort of person is bound to do that. You might as well resent a fig tree for secreting juice. (Anyway, before very long you’ll both be dead—dead and soon forgotten.) ([Location 1319](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1319)) - Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been. ([Location 1321](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1321)) - It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character. Otherwise it cannot harm you—inside or out. ([Location 1323](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1323)) - The tranquillity that comes when you stop caring what they say. Or think, or do. Only what you do. (Is this fair? Is this the right thing to do?) < . . . > not to be distracted by their darkness. To run straight for the finish line, unswerving. ([Location 1351](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1351)) - Beautiful things of any kind are beautiful in themselves and sufficient to themselves. Praise is extraneous. The object of praise remains what it was—no better and no worse. ([Location 1361](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1361)) - “If you seek tranquillity, do less.” Or (more accurately) do what’s essential—what the logos of a social being requires, and in the requisite way. Which brings a double satisfaction: to do less, better. ([Location 1384](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1384)) - 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. ([Location 1387](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1387)) - Something happens to you. Good. It was meant for you by nature, woven into the pattern from the beginning. Life is short. That’s all there is to say. Get what you can from the present—thoughtfully, justly. Unrestrained moderation. ([Location 1395](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1395)) - Nothing that goes on in anyone else’s mind can harm you. Nor can the shifts and changes in the world around you. —Then where is harm to be found? In your capacity to see it. Stop doing that and everything will be fine. Let the part of you that makes that judgment keep quiet even if the body it’s attached to is stabbed or burnt, or stinking with pus, or consumed by cancer. Or to put it another way: It needs to realize that what happens to everyone—bad and good alike—is neither good nor bad. That what happens in every life—lived naturally or not—is neither natural nor unnatural. ([Location 1445](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1445)) - 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. ([Location 1471](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1471)) - One who laid out another for burial, and was buried himself, and then the man who buried him—all in the same short space of time. In short, know this: Human lives are brief and trivial. Yesterday a blob of semen; tomorrow embalming fluid, ash. ([Location 1479](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1479)) - —It’s unfortunate that this has happened. No. It’s fortunate that this has happened and I’ve remained unharmed by it—not shattered by the present or frightened of the future. ([Location 1487](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1487)) - Take the shortest route, the one that nature planned—to speak and act in the healthiest way. Do that, and be free of pain and stress, free of all calculation and pretension. ([Location 1501](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1501)) - If an action or utterance is appropriate, then it’s appropriate for you. Don’t be put off by other people’s comments and criticism. If it’s right to say or do it, then it’s the right thing for you to do or say. ([Location 1529](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1529)) - No one could ever accuse you of being quick-witted. All right, but there are plenty of other things you can’t claim you “haven’t got in you.” Practice the virtues you can show: honesty, gravity, endurance, austerity, resignation, abstinence, patience, sincerity, moderation, seriousness, high-mindedness. ([Location 1536](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1536)) - 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. ([Location 1666](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1666)) - The mind is the ruler of the soul. It should remain unstirred by agitations of the flesh—gentle and violent ones alike. ([Location 1671](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1671)) - Honor and revere the gods, treat human beings as they deserve, be tolerant with others and strict with yourself. Remember, nothing belongs to you but your flesh and blood—and nothing else is under your control. ([Location 1710](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1710)) - You can lead an untroubled life provided you can grow, can think and act systematically. Two characteristics shared by gods and men (and every rational creature):   i. Not to let others hold you back. ii. To locate goodness in thinking and doing the right thing, and to limit your desires to that. ([Location 1712](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1712))