Meditations
Meditations - Marcus Aurelius
just because you’ve abandoned your hopes of becoming a great thinker or scientist, don’t give up on attaining freedom, achieving humility, serving others — 2025-07-30
The discipline of perception requires that we maintain absolute objectivity of thought: that we see things dispassionately for what they are. — 2025-07-30
The logos infuses and is wielded by our hegemonikon (literally, “that which guides”), which is the intellective part of our consciousness. In different contexts it can approximate either “will” or “character” and it performs many of the functions that English speakers attribute to the brain or the heart. — 2025-07-30
At every instant the objects and events in the world around us bombard us with impressions. As they do so they produce a phantasia, a mental impression. From this the mind generates a perception (hypolepsis), which might best be compared to a print made from a photographic negative. — 2025-07-30
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]. — 2025-07-30
progress for a rational mind means not accepting falsehood or uncertainty in its perceptions, making unselfish actions its only aim, seeking and shunning only the things it has control over, embracing what nature demands of it—the nature in which it participates, as the leaf’s nature does in the tree’s.
— 2025-07-30
He contrasts the court against philosophy as a stepmother against a mother—to be visited out of duty, but not someone we can really love — 2025-07-30
If you desire to master pain Unroll this book and read with care, And in it find abundantly A knowledge of the things that are, Those that have been, and those to come.
And know as well that joy and grief Are nothing more than empty smoke. — 2025-07-30
Not to support this side or that in chariot-racing, this fighter or that in the games. To put up with discomfort and not make demands. To do my own work, mind my own business, and have no time for slanderers. — 2025-07-30
to behave in a conciliatory way when people who have angered or annoyed us want to make up.
— 2025-07-30
To read attentively—not to be satisfied with “just getting the gist of it.” — 2025-07-30
that a man can show both strength and flexibility. — 2025-07-30
And to have learned how to accept favors from friends without losing your self-respect or appearing ungrateful. — 2025-07-30
to display expertise without pretension. — 2025-07-30
Not to shrug off a friend’s resentment—even unjustified resentment—but try to put things right. — 2025-07-30
To show your teachers ungrudging respect (the Domitius and Athenodotus story), and your children unfeigned love. — 2025-07-30
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. — 2025-07-30
to be steady and consistent in valuing philosophy. — 2025-07-30
Other people’s certainty that what he said was what he thought, and what he did was done without malice. — 2025-07-30
Even if you’re going to live three thousand more years, or ten times that, remember: you cannot lose another life than the one you’re living now, or live another one than the one you’re losing. — 2025-07-30
the longest-lived and those who will die soonest lose the same thing. The present is all that they can give up, since that is all you have, and what you do not have, you cannot lose. — 2025-07-30
When it turns its back on another person or sets out to do it harm, as the souls of the angry do. — 2025-07-31
. He’ll look calmly at the distinct beauty of old age in men, women, and at the loveliness of children. And other things like that will call out to him constantly—things unnoticed by others. Things seen only by those at home with Nature and its works.
— 2025-07-31
Don’t waste the rest of your time here worrying about other people — 2025-07-31
rational beings exist for one another; — 2025-07-31
doing what’s right sometimes requires patience; — 2025-07-31
While you’re alive and able—be good. — 2025-07-31
The value of attentiveness varies in proportion to its object. You’re better off not giving the small things more time than they deserve. — 2025-07-31
Time is a river, a violent current of events, glimpsed once and already carried past us, and another follows and is gone. — 2025-07-31
There is nothing bad in undergoing change—or good in emerging from it.
— 2025-07-31
The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts. — 2025-08-02
Anywhere you can lead your life, you can lead a good one. — 2025-08-02
What stands in the way becomes the way. — 2025-08-02
So other people hurt me? That’s their problem. Their character and actions are not mine. — 2025-08-02
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. — 2025-08-02
To locate goodness in thinking and doing the right thing, and to limit your desires to that. — 2025-08-02
true good fortune is what you make for yourself. Good fortune: good character, good intentions, and good actions. — 2025-08-02
Change and flux constantly remake the world, just as the incessant progression of time remakes eternity. — 2025-08-02
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.
— 2025-08-02
In the ring, our opponents can gouge us with their nails or butt us with their heads and leave a bruise, but we don’t denounce them for it or get upset with them or regard them from then on as violent types. We just keep an eye on them after that. Not out of hatred or suspicion. Just keeping a friendly distance. We need to do that in other areas. We need to excuse what our sparring partners do, and just keep our distance—without suspicion or hatred.
— 2025-08-02
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.
— 2025-08-02
Remember—your responsibilities can be broken down into individual parts as well. Concentrate on those, and finish the job methodically—without getting stirred up or meeting anger with anger. — 2025-08-02
Disgraceful: for the soul to give up when the body is still going strong. — 2025-08-02
Fight to be the person philosophy tried to make you.
— 2025-08-02
Nothing has meaning to my mind except its own actions. Which are within its own control. And it’s only the immediate ones that matter. Its past and future actions too are meaningless. — 2025-08-02
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? — 2025-08-02
Does the sun try to do the rain’s work? — 2025-08-02
The only thing that isn’t worthless: to live this life out truthfully and rightly. And be patient with those who don’t.
— 2025-08-02
Ambition means tying your well-being to what other people say or do. Self-indulgence means tying it to the things that happen to you. Sanity means tying it to your own actions. — 2025-08-02
You don’t have to turn this into something. It doesn’t have to upset you. Things can’t shape our decisions by themselves. — 2025-08-02
Practice really hearing what people say. Do your best to get inside their minds.
— 2025-08-02
Evil: the same old thing. No matter what happens, keep this in mind: It’s the same old thing, from one end of the world to the other. It fills the history books, ancient and modern, and the cities, and the houses too. Nothing new at all. Familiar, transient.
— 2025-08-03
our own worth is measured by what we devote our energy to.
— 2025-08-03
Focus on what is said when you speak and on what results from each action. Know what the one aims at, and what the other means. — 2025-08-03
Don’t be ashamed to need help. Like a soldier storming a wall, you have a mission to accomplish. And if you’ve been wounded and you need a comrade to pull you up? So what? — 2025-08-03
Frightened of change? But what can exist without it? — 2025-08-03
Other people’s mistakes? Leave them to their makers. — 2025-08-03
To labor cheerfully and so endure The wind that blows from heaven. — 2025-08-03
Everywhere, at each moment, you have the option:
• to accept this event with humility • to treat this person as he should be treated • to approach this thought with care, so that nothing irrational creeps in.
— 2025-08-03
Just pay attention, and resolve to live up to your own expectations. In everything. And when faced with a choice, remember: our business is with things that really matter. — 2025-08-06
What matters is what kind of soul he had. Whether he was satisfied to treat men with justice and the gods with reverence and didn’t lose his temper unpredictably at evil done by others, didn’t make himself the slave of other people’s ignorance, didn’t treat anything that nature did as abnormal, or put up with it as an unbearable imposition, didn’t put his mind in his body’s keeping.
— 2025-08-06
It’s quite possible to be a good man without anyone realizing it. Remember that.
— 2025-08-06
Whenever the force that makes us rational and social encounters something that is neither, then it can reasonably regard it as inferior. — 2025-08-06
Concentrate on what you have to do. Fix your eyes on it. Remind yourself that your task is to be a good human being; remind yourself what nature demands of people. Then do it, without hesitation, and speak the truth as you see it. But with kindness. With humility. Without hypocrisy. — 2025-08-07
Apply them constantly, to everything that happens: Physics. Ethics. Logic. — 2025-08-07
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.
— 2025-08-07
If it’s in your control, why do you do it? If it’s in someone else’s, then who are you blaming? Atoms? The gods? Stupid either way. Blame no one. Set people straight, if you can. If not, just repair the damage. And suppose you can’t do that either. Then where does blaming people get you? No pointless actions.
— 2025-08-07
This is what you deserve. You could be good today. But instead you choose tomorrow.
— 2025-08-07
People out for posthumous fame forget that the Generations To Come will be the same annoying people they know now. And just as mortal. What does it matter to you if they say x about you, or think y? — 2025-08-08
You want praise from people who kick themselves every fifteen minutes, the approval of people who despise themselves. (Is it a sign of self-respect to regret nearly everything you do?) — 2025-08-08
remember: the capacity for patience was given us for a reason. The gods are patient with them too, and even help them to concrete things: health, money, fame… . Such is the gods’ goodness. And yours, too, if you wanted. What’s stopping you?
— 2025-08-18
Leave other people’s mistakes where they lie.
— 2025-08-18
You participate in a society by your existence. Then participate in its life through your actions—all your actions. — 2025-08-18
Like that. In illness—or any other situation. Not to let go of philosophy, no matter what happens; not to bandy words with crackpots and philistines—good rules for any philosopher. — 2025-08-18
If they’ve made a mistake, correct them gently and show them where they went wrong. If you can’t do that, then the blame lies with you. Or no one. — 2025-08-18
Why all this guesswork? You can see what needs to be done. If you can see the road, follow it. Cheerfully, without turning back. If not, hold up and get the best advice you can. If anything gets in the way, forge on ahead, making good use of what you have on hand, sticking to what seems right. (The best goal to achieve, and the one we fall short of when we fail.)
— 2025-08-18
Does it make any difference to you if other people blame you for doing what’s right? It makes no difference. — 2025-08-18
stop talking about what the good man is like, and just be one. — 2025-08-18
It doesn’t matter how good a life you’ve led. There’ll still be people standing around the bed who will welcome the sad event.
— 2025-08-18
How many traits do you have that would make a lot of people glad to be rid of you? — 2025-08-18
Because anger, too, is weakness, as much as breaking down and giving up the struggle. Both are deserters: the man who breaks and runs, and the one who lets himself be alienated from his fellow humans. — 2025-08-19
Someone despises me. That’s their problem. Mine: not to do or say anything despicable. Someone hates me. Their problem. Mine: to be patient and cheerful with everyone, including them. Ready to show them their mistake. Not spitefully, or to show off my own self-control, but in an honest, upright way. — 2025-08-19
The despicable phoniness of people who say, “Listen, I’m going to level with you here.” What does that mean? It shouldn’t even need to be said. It should be obvious—written in block letters on your forehead. It should be audible in your voice, visible in your eyes, like a lover who looks into your face and takes in the whole story at a glance. A straightforward, honest person should be like someone who stinks: when you’re in the same room with him, you know it. But false straightforwardness is like a knife in the back. False friendship is the worst. Avoid it at all costs. If you’re honest and straightforward and mean well, it should show in your eyes. It should be unmistakable. — 2025-08-19
That you don’t know for sure it is a mistake. A lot of things are means to some other end. You have to know an awful lot before you can judge other people’s actions with real understanding. — 2025-08-19
How much more damage anger and grief do than the things that cause them. — 2025-08-19
kindness is invincible, provided it’s sincere — 2025-08-19
What can even the most vicious person do if you keep treating him with kindness and gently set him straight — 2025-08-19
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. — 2025-08-19
Socrates used to call popular beliefs “the monsters under the bed”—only useful for frightening children with. — 2025-08-19
At festivals the Spartans put their guests’ seats in the shade, but sat themselves down anywhere. — 2025-08-19
Stupidity is expecting figs in winter, or children in old age.
— 2025-08-19
It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own. — 2025-08-19
Practice even what seems impossible. The left hand is useless at almost everything, for lack of practice. But it guides the reins better than the right. From practice. — 2025-08-19
The student as boxer, not fencer. The fencer’s weapon is picked up and put down again. The boxer’s is part of him. All he has to do is clench his fist.
— 2025-08-19