# 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)) - Just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn’t matter. Cold or warm. Tired or well-rested. Despised or honored. Dying . . . or busy with other assignments. Because dying, too, is one of our assignments in life. There as well: “to do what needs doing.” ([Location 1745](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1745)) - Look inward. Don’t let the true nature or value of anything elude you. ([Location 1751](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1751)) - The best revenge is not to be like that. ([Location 1757](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1757)) - The court . . . and philosophy: Keep returning to it, to rest in its embrace. It’s all that makes the court—and you—endurable. ([Location 1773](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1773)) - Not to assume it’s impossible because you find it hard. But to recognize that if it’s humanly possible, you can do it too. ([Location 1822](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1822)) - 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. ([Location 1829](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1829)) - Death. The end of sense-perception, of being controlled by our emotions, of mental activity, of enslavement to our bodies. ([Location 1854](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1854)) - Disgraceful: for the soul to give up when the body is still going strong. ([Location 1856](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1856)) - 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? ([Location 1877](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1877)) - 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. It’s good to keep this in mind. ([Location 1950](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1950)) - Practice really hearing what people say. Do your best to get inside their minds. ([Location 1970](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1970)) - What injures the hive injures the bee. ([Location 1972](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1972)) - No one can keep you from living as your nature requires. Nothing can happen to you that is not required by Nature. ([Location 1980](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=1980)) - we need to practice acceptance. Without disdain. But remembering that our own worth is measured by what we devote our energy to. ([Location 2003](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=2003)) - Everything is interwoven, and the web is holy; none of its parts are unconnected. They are composed harmoniously, and together they compose the world. One world, made up of all things. One divinity, present in them all. One substance and one law—the logos that all rational beings share. And one truth . . . If this is indeed the culmination of one process, beings who share the same birth, the same logos. ([Location 2018](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=2018)) - Treat what you don’t have as nonexistent. Look at what you have, the things you value most, and think of how much you’d crave them if you didn’t have them. But be careful. Don’t feel such satisfaction that you start to overvalue them—that it would upset you to lose them. ([Location 2080](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=2080)) - [On pain:] Unendurable pain brings its own end with it. Chronic pain is always endurable: the intelligence maintains serenity by cutting itself off from the body, the mind remains undiminished. And the parts that pain affects—let them speak for themselves, if they can. ([Location 2100](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=2100)) - Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what’s left and live it properly. ([Location 2172](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=2172)) - And keep in mind too that pain often comes in disguise—as drowsiness, fever, loss of appetite. . . . When you’re bothered by things like that, remind yourself: “I’m giving in to pain.” ([Location 2200](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=2200)) - To live life in peace, immune to all compulsion. Let them scream whatever they want. Let animals dismember this soft flesh that covers you. How would any of that stop you from keeping your mind calm—reliably sizing up what’s around you—and ready to make good use of whatever happens? ([Location 2217](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=2217)) - Perfection of character: to live your last day, every day, without frenzy, or sloth, or pretense. ([Location 2223](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=2223)) - The first step: Don’t be anxious. Nature controls it all. And before long you’ll be no one, nowhere—like Hadrian, like Augustus. ([Location 2269](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=2269)) - Remember that to change your mind and to accept correction are free acts too. The action is yours, based on your own will, your own decision—and your own mind. ([Location 2307](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=2307)) - Three relationships:   i. with the body you inhabit; ii. with the divine, the cause of everything in all things; iii. with the people around you. ([Location 2347](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=2347)) - To accept it without arrogance, to let it go with indifference. ([Location 2371](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=2371)) - Don’t let your imagination be crushed by life as a whole. Don’t try to picture everything bad that could possibly happen. Stick with the situation at hand, and ask, “Why is this so unbearable? Why can’t I endure it?” You’ll be embarrassed to answer. Then remind yourself that past and future have no power over you. Only the present—and even that can be minimized. Just mark off its limits. And if your mind tries to claim that it can’t hold out against that . . . well, then, heap shame upon it. ([Location 2384](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=2384)) - That’s what the outpouring—the diffusion—of thought should be like: not emptied out, but extended. And not striking at obstacles with fury and violence, or falling away before them, but holding its ground and illuminating what receives it. What doesn’t transmit light creates its own darkness. ([Location 2483](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=2483)) - Real good luck would be to abandon life without ever encountering dishonesty, or hypocrisy, or self-indulgence, or pride. But the “next best voyage” is to die when you’ve had enough. Or are you determined to lie down with evil? Hasn’t experience even taught you that—to avoid it like the plague? Because it is a plague—a mental cancer—worse than anything caused by tainted air or an unhealthy climate. Diseases like that can only threaten your life; this one attacks your humanity. ([Location 2521](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=2521)) - Don’t look down on death, but welcome it. It too is one of the things required by nature. Like youth and old age. Like growth and maturity. Like a new set of teeth, a beard, the first gray hair. Like sex and pregnancy and childbirth. Like all the other physical changes at each stage of life, our dissolution is no different. ([Location 2527](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=2527)) - Today I escaped from anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions—not outside. ([Location 2580](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=2580)) - Enter their minds, and you’ll find the judges you’re so afraid of—and how judiciously they judge themselves. ([Location 2592](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=2592)) - how the mind can participate in the sensations of the body and yet maintain its serenity, and focus on its own well-being. ([Location 2692](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=2692)) - that everything was born to die. ([Location 2835](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=2835)) - Have I done something for the common good? Then I share in the benefits. To stay centered on that. Not to give up. ([Location 2986](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=2986)) - Hence justice. Which is the source of all the other virtues. For how could we do what justice requires if we are distracted by things that don’t matter, if we are naive, gullible, inconstant? ([Location 3027](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=3027)) - Someone despises me. That’s their problem. Mine: not to do or say anything despicable. Someone hates me. Their problem. ([Location 3036](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=3036)) - We have the potential for it. If we can learn to be indifferent to what makes no difference. This is how we learn: by looking at each thing, both the parts and the whole. Keeping in mind that none of them can dictate how we perceive it. They don’t impose themselves on us. They hover before us, unmoving. It is we who generate the judgments—inscribing them on ourselves. And we don’t have to. We could leave the page blank—and if a mark slips through, erase it instantly. ([Location 3053](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=3053)) - When you lose your temper, or even feel irritated: that human life is very short. Before long all of us will be laid out side by side. ([Location 3077](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=3077)) - When you start to lose your temper, remember: There’s nothing manly about rage. It’s courtesy and kindness that define a human being—and a man. That’s who possesses strength and nerves and guts, not the angry whiners. To react like that brings you closer to impassivity—and so to strength. Pain is the opposite of strength, and so is anger. Both are things we suffer from, and yield to. ([Location 3092](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=3092)) - That to expect bad people not to injure others is crazy. It’s to ask the impossible. And to let them behave like that to other people but expect them to exempt you is arrogant—the act of a tyrant. ([Location 3096](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08V5LFFDZ&location=3096))