Meditations
Last read July 12, 2026
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Notes
I like Meditations because, despite being written almost 2,000 years ago, it makes you realize we’re still mostly the same and worry about the same things. Worrying about what others think of you, or about not working on something you enjoy, felt particularly familiar.
I found that comforting. You feel as though your problems are new, as if you’re only just discovering them. Then you read this and realize that even someone as powerful as Marcus Aurelius was worried about similar things. That’s refreshing.
It also changed how I process those worries. I like the idea of separating what’s outside your control, such as what people think of you, from what you can actually change. Act on what you can change, and let go of other people’s opinions. Easier said than done, but it helps to see it in writing.
The passage about not wanting to get out of bed has stayed with me. Sometimes you want to stay there, do nothing, and forget about the world. I took his response as a reminder that we have a duty to nature and to others, and that our work matters. Thinking of something I don’t want to do as my duty—what I’m supposed to be doing at that moment—does motivate me.
Highlights
24 highlights.
To avoid the public schools, to hire good private teachers, and to accept the resulting costs as money well-spent.
Page 50, location 807
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.
Page 61, location 980
Which means making sure that the power within stays safe and free from assault, superior to pleasure and pain, doing nothing randomly or dishonestly and with imposture, not dependent on anyone else’s doing something or not doing it.
Page 64, location 1028
You need to get used to winnowing your thoughts, so that if someone says, “What are you thinking about?” you can respond at once (and truthfully) that you are thinking this or thinking that.
Page 67, location 1066
“The world is nothing but change. Our life is only perception.”
Page 75, location 1183
It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character. Otherwise it cannot harm you—inside or out.
Page 76, location 1198
That every event is the right one. Look closely and you’ll see. Not just the right one overall, but right.
Page 76, location 1200
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?”
Page 79, location 1247
And then you might see what the life of the good man is like—someone content with what nature assigns him,
Page 79, location 1250
Then what should we work for? Only this: proper understanding; unselfish action; truthful speech.
Page 81, location 1284
So remember this principle when something threatens to cause you pain: the thing itself was no misfortune at all; to endure it and prevail is great good fortune.
Page 84, location 1333
- Remember: 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.
Page 93, location 1477
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.
Page 95, location 1513
Nature is pliable, obedient. And the logos that governs it has no reason to do evil. It knows no evil, does none, and causes harm to nothing. It dictates all beginnings and all endings.
Page 97, location 1536
- The best revenge is not to be like that.
Page 98, location 1546
How cruel—to forbid people to want what they think is good for them. And yet that’s just what you won’t let them do when you get angry at their misbehavior. They’re drawn toward what they think is good for them.
Page 103, location 1623
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.
Page 108, location 1717
Nothing can happen to you that is not required by Nature.
Page 109, location 1728
No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be good. Like gold or emerald or purple repeating to itself, “No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be emerald, my color undiminished.”
Page 113, location 1770
Can any vital process take place without something being changed?
Page 114, location 1782
Alexander and Caesar and Pompey. Compared with Diogenes, Heraclitus, Socrates? The philosophers knew the what, the why, the how. Their minds were their own. The others? Nothing but anxiety and enslavement.
Page 124, location 1944
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.
Page 125, location 1949
If you make ripeness alone your good . . . If a few actions more or less, governed by the right logos, are merely a few more or less . . . If it makes no difference whether you look at the world for this long or that long . . . . . . then death shouldn’t scare you.
Page 179, location 2824
Roman Stoicism, by contrast, was a practical discipline—not an abstract system of thought, but an attitude to life.
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