Meditations
Marcus Aurelius (121–180), 180
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A Roman emperor's private notebook, written on campaign. Short, blunt reminders to himself about anger, death and other people's opinions, which read like advice addressed to you. Short, blunt notes to himself arrive with a calm, aphoristic rhythm, steadying rather than urgent, and tinged with melancholy about death.
Feels like serenity, melancholy and defiance. About morality, death and time.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you want blunt, Stoic reminders about anger, reputation and mortality, written as if to you. Be warned that this English edition uses an older translation, with 'thy' and 'thyself' and long clauses that take some patience.
Why read it
It offers a compact way to rehearse calm judgment when other people's opinions or your own temper press on you.
Pages from the book
Being cursed at, and staying as clear as running water.
‘They kill me, they cut my flesh; they persecute my person with curses.’ What then? May not thy mind for all this continue pure, prudent, temperate, just? As a fountain of sweet and clear water, though she be cursed by some stander by, yet do her springs nevertheless still run as sweet and clear as before; yea though either dirt or dung be thrown in, yet is it no sooner thrown, than dispersed, and she cleared. She cannot be dyed or infected by it. What then must I do, that I may have within myself an overflowing fountain, and not a well? Beget thyself by continual pains and endeavours to true liberty with charity, and true simplicity and modesty. You keep wishing for a cabin by the sea. There is a cheaper one.
They seek for themselves private retiring places, as country villages, the sea-shore, mountains; yea thou thyself art wont to long much after such places. But all this thou must know proceeds from simplicity in the highest degree. At what time soever thou wilt, it is in thy power to retire into thyself, and to be at rest, and free from all businesses. A man cannot any whither retire better than to his own soul; he especially who is beforehand provided of such things within, which whensoever he doth withdraw himself to look in, may presently afford unto him perfect ease and tranquillity. By tranquillity I understand a decent orderly disposition and carriage, free from all confusion and tumultuousness. Afford then thyself this retiring continually, and thereby refresh and renew thyself. Why the cracked crust is the part that makes you hungry.
This also thou must observe, that whatsoever it is that naturally doth happen to things natural, hath somewhat in itself that is pleasing and delightful: as a great loaf when it is baked, some parts of it cleave as it were, and part asunder, and make the crust of it rugged and unequal, and yet those parts of it, though in some sort it be against the art and intention of baking itself, that they are thus cleft and parted, which should have been and were first made all even and uniform, they become it well nevertheless, and have a certain peculiar property, to stir the appetite. So figs are accounted fairest and ripest then, when they begin to shrink, and wither as it were. So ripe olives, when they are next to putrefaction, then are they in their proper beauty. Marcus Aurelius.Marcus never meant these notes for readers. The first printed edition appeared in Zurich in 1558, almost fourteen centuries after his death.
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Questions readers ask
- Is Meditations for me?
- You may like it if you want blunt, Stoic reminders about anger, reputation and mortality, written as if to you. Be warned that this English edition uses an older translation, with 'thy' and 'thyself' and long clauses that take some patience.
- What is Meditations like?
- Short, blunt notes to himself arrive with a calm, aphoristic rhythm, steadying rather than urgent, and tinged with melancholy about death. Feels like serenity, melancholy and defiance. About morality, death and time.
- What should I read after Meditations?
- If you liked Meditations, try Moral Letters to Lucilius (Seneca), Beyond Good and Evil (Friedrich Nietzsche) and The Enchiridion (Epictetus).
A taste of the feed
What if a life were weighed the way gold is weighed?
Pray, let us see to it, my dear Lucilius, that our lives, like jewels of great price, be noteworthy not because of their width but because of their weight. Let us measure them by their performance, not by their duration. Would you know wherein lies the difference between this hardy man who, despising Fortune, has served through every campaign of life and has attained to life’s Supreme Good, and that other person over whose head many years have passed? The former exists even after his death; the latter has died even before he was dead.
Moral Letters to Lucilius · Seneca
What if the terror was never in the thing itself?
Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of things. Thus death is nothing terrible, else it would have appeared so to Socrates. But the terror consists in our notion of death, that it is terrible. When, therefore, we are hindered or disturbed, or grieved, let us never impute it to others, but to ourselves—that is, to our own views. It is the action of an uninstructed person to reproach others for his own misfortunes; of one entering upon instruction, to reproach himself; and one perfectly instructed, to reproach neither others nor himself.
The Enchiridion · Epictetus
Measured against eternity, even a long life is one afternoon.
But because there is nothing beyond old age, we call that long. All these things are said to be long or short, according to the proportion of time they were given us for. Artistotle says there is a kind of insect near the river Hypanis, which runs from a certain part of Europe into the Pontus, whose life consists but of one day. Those that die at the eighth hour die in full age; those who die when the sun sets are very old, especially when the days are at the longest. Compare our longest life with eternity, and we shall be found almost as short-lived as those little animals.
Tusculan Disputations · Cicero
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