## Meditations highlights
🔹 *parent* [[❞ Meditations|Meditations]]
▫️ *author* [[Marcus Aurelius]]
> [!caption-left]
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>> Meditations
### Metadata
**title**:: Meditations highlights
**author**:: Marcus Aurelius
**category**:: books/highlights
**image_url**:: "https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41zY8V%2B5QEL._SL200_.jpg"
**cover**:: [cover](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41zY8V%2B5QEL._SL200_.jpg)
**modified**:: Nov 2, 2023
### Highlights
**Added November 4, 2023 at 2:25 PM**
[Location 48](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=48)
> *At a later stage he would have been handed over to private tutors to be introduced to literature, especially, no doubt, Vergil’s great epic, the Aeneid.* ^620960458
<br>**Added April 7, 2024 at 1:43 PM**
[Location 578](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=578) 🟦
> *A persistent motif is the need to restrain anger and irritation with other people, to put up with their incompetence or malice, to show them the errors of their ways. Several entries focus on the frustrations of life at court, nowhere more present than when Marcus tells himself to stop complaining about them* ^703538738
<br>**Added April 19, 2024 at 8:49 PM**
[Location 824](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=824) 🟦
> *To read attentively—not to be satisfied with “just getting the gist of it.” And not to fall for every smooth talker. And for introducing me to Epictetus’s lectures—and loaning me his own copy.* ^708894717
[Location 835](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=835) 🟦
> *To investigate and analyze, with understanding and logic, the principles we ought to live by. Not to display anger or other emotions. To be free of passion and yet full of love. To praise without bombast; to display expertise without pretension.* ^708894718
[Location 837](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=837) 🟧
> *10. THE LITERARY CRITIC ALEXANDER 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.* ^708894719
[Location 841](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=841)
> *To recognize the malice, cunning, and hypocrisy that power produces, and the peculiar ruthlessness often shown by people from “good families.”* ^708894720
[Location 845](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=845)
> *13. CATULUS Not to shrug off a friend’s resentment—even unjustified resentment—but try to put things right.* ^708894721
[Location 850](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=850)
> *And from him as well, to be steady and consistent in valuing philosophy. And to help others and be eager to share, not to be a pessimist, and never to doubt your friends’ affection for you. And that when people incurred his disapproval, they always knew it. And that his friends never had to speculate about his attitude to anything: it was always clear.* ^708894722
[Location 861](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=861)
> *Listening to anyone who could contribute to the public good. His dogged determination to treat people as they deserved.* ^708894723
[Location 871](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=871)
> *His attitude to the gods: no superstitiousness. And his attitude to men: no demagoguery, no currying favor, no pandering. Always sober, always steady, and never vulgar or a prey to fads.* ^708894724
[Location 878](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=878) 🟦
> *His willingness to take adequate care of himself. Not a hypochondriac or obsessed with his appearance, but not ignoring things either. With the result that he hardly ever needed medical attention, or drugs or any sort of salve or ointment.* ^708894725
[Location 880](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=880)
> *This, in particular: 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.* ^708894726
[Location 883](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=883) 🟦
> *Not prone to go off on tangents, or pulled in all directions, but sticking with the same old places and the same old things.* ^708894727
[Location 891](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=891)
> *You could have said of him (as they say of Socrates) that he knew how to enjoy and abstain from things that most people find it hard to abstain from and all too easy to enjoy. Strength, perseverance, self-control in both areas: the mark of a soul in readiness—indomitable.* ^708894728
[Location 901](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=901) 🟦
> *That I had the kind of brother I did. One whose character challenged me to improve my own. One whose love and affection enriched my life.* ^708894729
[Location 903](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=903) 🟧
> *That my children weren’t born stupid or physically deformed.* ^708894730
[Location 907](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=907) 🟦
> *That I was shown clearly and often what it would be like to live as nature requires. The gods did all they could—through their gifts, their help, their inspiration—to ensure that I could live as nature demands. And if I’ve failed, it’s no one’s fault but mine. Because I didn’t pay attention to what they told me—to what they taught me, practically, step by step.* ^708894731
[Location 913](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=913) 🟦
> *That whenever I felt like helping someone who was short of money, or otherwise in need, I never had to be told that I had no resources to do it with. And that I was never put in that position myself—of having to take something from someone else.* ^708894732
[Location 918](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=918) 🟦
> *That when I became interested in philosophy I didn’t fall into the hands of charlatans, and didn’t get bogged down in writing treatises, or become absorbed by logic-chopping, or preoccupied with physics.* ^708894733
<br>**Added May 6, 2024 at 11:12 AM**
[Location 1122](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=1122) 🟦
> *Nowhere you can go is more peaceful—more free of interruptions—than your own soul. Especially if you have other things to rely on. An instant’s recollection and there it is: complete tranquillity. And by tranquillity I mean a kind of harmony.* ^715963207
[Location 1125](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=1125) 🟦
> *What’s there to complain about? People’s misbehavior? But take into consideration: that rational beings exist for one another; that doing what’s right sometimes requires patience; that no one does the wrong thing deliberately; and the number of people who have feuded and envied and hated and fought and died and been buried.* ^715963208
[Location 1140](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=1140) 🟧
> *“The world is nothing but change. Our life is only perception.”* ^715963209
[Location 1150](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=1150) 🟦
> *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.)* ^715963210
[Location 1152](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=1152)
> *Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been.* ^715963211
[Location 1162](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=1162) 🟦
> *You have a mind? —Yes. Well, why not use it? Isn’t that all you want—for it to do its job?* ^715963212
[Location 1168](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=1168) 🟦
> *Not to live as if you had endless years ahead of you. Death overshadows you. While you’re alive and able—be good.* ^715963213
[Location 1175](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=1175) 🟥
> *What use is praise, except to make your lifestyle a little more comfortable?* ^715963214
[Location 1193](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=1193)
> *“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.* ^715963215
[Location 1202](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=1202)
> *Life is short. That’s all there is to say. Get what you can from the present—thoughtfully, justly. Unrestrained moderation.* ^715963216
[Location 1221](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=1221)
> *A key point to bear in mind: The value of attentiveness varies in proportion to its object. You’re better off not giving the small things more time than they deserve.* ^715963217
[Location 1240](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=1240)
> *40. The world as a living being—one nature, one soul. Keep that in mind. And how everything feeds into that single experience, moves with a single motion. And how everything helps produce everything else. Spun and woven together.* ^715963218
[Location 1244](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=1244)
> *43. Time is a river, a violent current of events, glimpsed once and already carried past us, and another follows and is gone.* ^715963219
[Location 1252](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=1252) 🟦
> *“Our words and actions should not be like those of sleepers” (for we act and speak in dreams as well) “or of children copying their parents”—doing and saying only what we have been told.* ^715963220
[Location 1256](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=1256)
> *48. Don’t let yourself forget how many doctors have died, after furrowing their brows over how many deathbeds. How many astrologers, after pompous forecasts about others’ ends. How many philosophers, after endless disquisitions on death and immortality. How many warriors, after inflicting thousands of casualties themselves. How many tyrants, after abusing the power of life and death atrociously, as if they were themselves immortal.* ^715963221
[Location 1262](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=1262)
> *In short, know this: Human lives are brief and trivial. Yesterday a blob of semen; tomorrow embalming fluid, ash. To pass through this brief life as nature demands. To give it up without complaint. Like an olive that ripens and falls. Praising its mother, thanking the tree it grew on.* ^715963222
[Location 1272](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=1272) 🟥
> *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.* ^715963223
[Location 1278](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=1278)
> *51. 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.* ^715963224
<br>**Added August 27, 2024 at 7:01 PM**
[Location 1825](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=1825)
> *8. No time for reading. For controlling your arrogance, yes. For overcoming pain and pleasure, yes. For outgrowing ambition, yes. For not feeling anger at stupid and unpleasant people—even for caring about them—for that, yes.* ^764066084
[Location 1831](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=1831)
> *When you have trouble getting out of bed in the morning, remember that your defining characteristic—what defines a human being—is to work with others. Even animals know how to sleep. And it’s the characteristic activity that’s the more natural one—more innate and more satisfying.* ^764066085
[Location 1840](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=1840) 🟦
> *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.* ^764066086
[Location 1841](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=1841)
> *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.* ^764066087
[Location 1849](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=1849) 🟦
> *And what does the ball gain as it flies upward? Or lose when it plummets to earth? What does the bubble gain from its existence? Or lose by bursting? And the same for a candle.* ^764066088
<br>**Added October 16, 2024 at 8:32 PM**
[Location 1981](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=1981)
> *And to pursue pleasure as good, and flee from pain as evil—that too is blasphemous. Someone who does that is bound to find himself constantly reproaching nature—complaining that it doesn’t treat the good and bad as they deserve, but often lets the bad enjoy pleasure and the things that produce it, and makes the good suffer pain, and the things that produce pain. And moreover, to fear pain is to fear something that’s bound to happen, the world being what it is—and that again is blasphemy. While if you pursue pleasure, you can hardly avoid wrongdoing—which is manifestly blasphemous.* ^796992298
[Location 1985](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=1985) 🟦
> *Some things nature is indifferent to; if it privileged one over the other it would hardly have created both. And if we want to follow nature, to be of one mind with it, we need to share its indifference. To privilege pleasure over pain—life over death, fame over anonymity—is clearly blasphemous. Nature certainly doesn’t.* ^796992299
[Location 1995](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=1995)
> *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.* ^796992300
[Location 2006](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=2006)
> *4. To do harm is to do yourself harm. To do an injustice is to do yourself an injustice—it degrades you.  5. And you can also commit injustice by doing nothing.* ^796992301
[Location 2017](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=2017) 🟦
> *And things that share an intelligent nature are just as prone to seek out what is like them. If not more so. Because their superiority in other ways is matched by their greater readiness to mix and mingle with their counterparts.* ^796992302
[Location 2026](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=2026) 🟦
> *Humanity, divinity, and the world: all of them bearing fruit. Each fruitful in its season. Normally we limit the word to vines and other plants. Unnecessarily. The fruit of the logos nourishes both us and it. And other things spring from it too—of the same species as the logos itself.* ^796992303
[Location 2042](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=2042) 🟦
> *Enter their minds, and you’ll find the judges you’re so afraid of—and how judiciously they judge themselves.* ^796992304
[Location 2044](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=2044)
> *Leave other people’s mistakes where they lie.* ^796992305
[Location 2052](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=2052)
> *You participate in a society by your existence. Then participate in its life through your actions—all your actions. Any action not directed toward a social end (directly or indirectly) is a disturbance to your life, an obstacle to wholeness, a source of dissension. Like the man in the Assembly—a faction to himself, always out of step with the majority.* ^796992306
[Location 2056](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=2056) 🟦
> *Identify its purpose—what makes it what it is—and examine that. (Ignore its concrete form.) Then calculate the length of time that such a thing was meant to last.* ^796992307
[Location 2058](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=2058) 🟦
> *When you face someone’s insults, hatred, whatever … look at his soul. Get inside him. Look at what sort of person he is. You’ll find you don’t need to strain to impress him. But you do have to wish him well. He’s your closest relative. The gods assist him just as they do you—by signs and dreams and every other way—to get the things he wants.* ^796992308
[Location 2067](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=2067) 🟧
> *The design of the world is like a flood, sweeping all before it. The foolishness of them—little men busy with affairs of state, with philosophy—or what they think of as philosophy. Nothing but phlegm and mucus.* ^796992309
[Location 2079](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=2079) 🟥
> *Indifference to external events. And a commitment to justice in your own acts. Which means: thought and action resulting in the common good. What you were born to do.* ^796992310
[Location 2089](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=2089) 🟦
> *To decompose is to be recomposed. That’s what nature does. Nature—through whom all things happen as they should, and have happened forever in just the same way, and will continue to, one way or another, endlessly. That things happen for the worst and always will, that the gods have no power to regulate them, and the world is condemned to never-ending evil—how can you say that?* ^796992311
[Location 2099](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=2099)
> *If they’ve injured you, then they’re the ones who suffer for it. But have they?* ^796992312
[Location 2115](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=2115)
> *Not to let go of philosophy, no matter what happens; not to bandy words with crackpots and philistines—good rules for any philosopher. Concentrate on what you’re doing, and what you’re doing it with.* ^796992313
[Location 2127](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=2127)
> *So when you call someone “untrustworthy” or “ungrateful,” turn the reproach on yourself. It was you who did wrong. By assuming that someone with those traits deserved your trust. Or by doing them a favor and expecting something in return, instead of looking to the action itself for your reward. What else did you expect from helping someone out? Isn’t it enough that you’ve done what your nature demands? You want a salary for it too? As if your eyes expected a reward for seeing, or your feet for walking. That’s what they were made for. By doing what they were designed to do, they’re performing their function. Whereas humans were made to help others. And when we do help others—or help them to do something—we’re doing what we were designed for. We perform our function.* ^796992314
[Location 2142](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=2142) 🟧
> *Will you ever take your stand as a fellow citizen with gods and human beings, blaming no one, deserving no one’s censure?* ^796992315
[Location 2147](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=2147) 🟥
> *Everything that happens is either endurable or not. If it’s endurable, then endure it. Stop complaining. If it’s unendurable … then stop complaining. Your destruction will mean its end as well. Just remember: you can endure anything your mind can make endurable, by treating it as in your interest to do so. In your interest, or in your nature.* ^796992316
[Location 2151](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=2151)
> *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.* ^796992317
[Location 2171](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=2171) 🟦
> *And don’t imagine either that those elements—the solid ones and the ethereal—are with us from our birth. Their influx took place yesterday, or the day before—from the food we ate, the air we breathed. And that’s what changes—not the person your mother gave birth to. —But if you’re inextricably linked to it through your sense of individuality? That’s not what we’re talking about here.* ^796992318
[Location 2198](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=2198)
> *He has stripped away his body and—realizing that at some point soon he will have to abandon mankind and leave all this behind—has dedicated himself to serving justice in all he does, and nature in all that happens. What people say or think about him, or how they treat him, isn’t something he worries about. Only these two questions: Is what he’s doing now the right thing to be doing? Does he accept and welcome what he’s been assigned? He has stripped away all other occupations, all other tasks. He wants only to travel a straight path—to God, by way of law.* ^796992319
[Location 2233](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=2233)
> *When a slave runs away from his master, we call him a fugitive slave. But the law of nature is a master too, and to break it is to become a fugitive. To feel grief, anger or fear is to try to escape from something decreed by the ruler of all things, now or in the past or in the future. And that ruler is law, which governs what happens to each of us. To feel grief or anger or fear is to become a fugitive—a fugitive from justice.* ^796992320
[Location 2247](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=2247) 🟧
> *Stop whatever you’re doing for a moment and ask yourself: Am I afraid of death because I won’t be able to do this anymore?* ^796992321
[Location 2248](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=2248) 🟦
> *When faced with people’s bad behavior, turn around and ask when you have acted like that. When you saw money as a good, or pleasure, or social position. Your anger will subside as soon as you recognize that they acted under compulsion (what else could they do?). Or remove the compulsion, if you can.* ^796992322
> *Note: ==Seeing a past version of yourself and the mistakes that separates you from him.==*
[Location 2266](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=2266) 🟦
> *A privilege not granted to a cylinder—to determine its own action. Or to water, or fire, or any of the other things governed by nature alone, or by an irrational soul. Too many things obstruct them and get in their way. But the intellect and logos are able to make their way through anything in their path—by inborn capacity or sheer force of will. Keep before your eyes the ease with which they do this—the ease with which the logos is carried through all things, as fire is drawn upward or a stone falls to earth, as a cylinder rolls down an inclined plane.* ^796992323
[Location 2286](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=2286) 🟥
> *A healthy sense of hearing or smell should be prepared for any sound or scent; a healthy stomach should have the same reaction to all foods, as a mill to what it grinds. So too a healthy mind should be prepared for anything. The one that keeps saying, “Are my children all right?” or “Everyone must approve of me” is like eyes that can only stand pale colors, or teeth that can handle only mush.* ^796992324
[Location 2293](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=2293) 🟦
> *Remember that, when the time comes. You’ll be less reluctant to leave if you can tell yourself, “This is the sort of life I’m leaving. Even the people around me, the ones I spent so much time fighting for, praying over, caring about—even they want me gone, in hopes that it will make their own lives easier. How could anyone stand a longer stay here?” And yet, don’t leave angry with them. Be true to who you are: caring, sympathetic, kind. And not as if you were being torn away from life. But the way it is when someone dies peacefully, how the soul is released from the body—that’s how you should leave them. It was nature that bound you to them—that tied the knot. And nature that now unties you.* ^796992325
[Location 2300](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=2300) 🟥
> *Learn to ask of all actions, “Why are they doing that?” Starting with your own.* ^796992326
[Location 2318](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=2318) 🟦
> *To acquire indifference to pretty singing, to dancing, to the martial arts: Analyze the melody into the notes that form it, and as you hear each one, ask yourself whether you’re powerless against that. That should be enough to deter you.* ^796992327
[Location 2323](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=2323) 🟥
> *The resolute soul: Resolute in separation from the body. And then in dissolution or fragmentation—or continuity. But the resolution has to be the result of its own decision, not just in response to outside forces [like the Christians]. It has to be considered and serious, persuasive to other people. Without dramatics.* ^796992328
[Location 2332](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=2332) 🟧
> *If I and my two children cannot move the gods The gods must have their reasons* ^796992329
[Location 2334](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000FC1JAI&location=2334)
> *And why should we feel anger at the world?* ^796992330