Marcus Aurelius was another great Ancient Philosopher as well as a Roman Emperor living at the
time of the Early Christian era.
(A.D. 161 - 180)
(A.D. 161 - 180)
He came a bit later than Seneca (the younger).
Marcus was a rare human Ruler...as he did not allow himself to abuse his own power.
Where can we find such another?
I have placed some of Marcus Aurelius' observations-of-Life here. Basically these meditations are
taken from his personal notebooks, not necessarily meant for publication.
(From Modern Library Edition 2002)
edited
(From Modern Library Edition 2002)
edited
_________________________________________
MARCIS AURELIUS
( MEDITATIONS)
(From Modern Library 2002 edition)
(edited)
(edited)
BOOK I
BLAME NOONE!
To hear unwelcome truths. (6 - learned from Diognetus)
To praise without bombast; to display expertise without pretention (9 - from Sextus)
To recognize the malice, cunning and hypocrisy that power produces, and the peculiar ruthlessness often shown by people from 'good families.' (11 - from Fronto)
Not to shrug off a friend's resentment - even unjustified resentment - but try to put things right.
(13 - from Catulus)
Optimism in adversity - especially illness
Doing your job without whining
The sense of 'staying' on the path rather than being 'kept' on it
That no one could ever have felt patronized by him - or to be in a position to patronize him
(15 - from Maximus)
Indifference to superficial honors.
Listening to anyone who could contribute to the public good.
His advance planning (well in advance) and discreet good attention to even minor things.
His willingness to yield the floor to experts.
(16 - Adapted Father)
That I had the kind of brother I did. One whose character challenged me to improve my own.
That I was never put in the position of having to take something from someone else.
(17 - The Gods)
________________________________________
BOOK 11
No one can implicate me in ugliness.
1.
What is Divine if full of Providence.
3.
...that there is a limit to the time assigned you and if you don't use it to free yourself, it will be gone and never return.
4.
People who labor all their lives but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse toward are wsting their time - even when hard at work.
7.
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 - hense neither good nor bad.
11.
Nothing is more pathetic than people who run around in circles...
13.
What is Divine deserves our respect because it is good; whaat is human deserves our affection because it is like us.
BOOK 111
( IN CARNUNTUM)
You boarded, you set sail, you've made the passage.
Time to disembark.
3.
...an athlete in the greatest of all conntests - the struggle not to be overwhelmed by anything that happens.
4.
Don't gussy-up your thoughts.
5.
To stand straight - not straightened.
5.
Stand your own ground without making a show of it. Just be sure your've done your homework first.
6.
It would be wrong for anything to stand between you and attaining goodness.
6.
If you can privilege your own mind, your guiding Spirit and your reference for its powers, that should keep you clear of dramatics of wailing and gnashing of teeth.
7.
Stop Drifting!
11.
____________________________________________
BOOK 1V
Nowhere you can go is more peaceful - more free of interruption - than your own Soul.
3.
No one does the wrong thing deliberately.
3.
Keep your mouth shut!
3.
The emptiness of all those applauding hands.
3.
The people who praise us - how capricious they are - how arbitrary.
3.
Things have no hold on the Soul.
3.
Choose not to be harmed - and you won't feel harmed.
7.
While your're alive and able - be good.
17.
Beautiful things of any kind are beautiful in themselves and sufficient to themselves. Praise is extrneous.
20.
If you seek tranquility, do less. Or do what's essential.
24.
Ask yourself at every moment, is this necessary?
24.
Then, for what should we work? Only this: proper understanding, unselfish action; truthful speech. A resolve to accept whatever happens as necessary and familiar flowing like water from the same source and spring.
33.
Look at what the wise do and what they don't.
38.
_____________________________________
BOOK V
Some people when they so someone a favor alwayas look for a chance to call it in.
6.
Either no prayers at all or one that's straightforward.
7.
What happens to each of us is ordered. It furthers our destiny.
8.
Any assessment we make is subject to alteration - just as we are ourselves.
10.
Look at the way the people around you behave.
10.
What am I doing with my Soul? Interrogate yourself!
11.
Is wisdom really so much weaker than ignorance et vanity?
18.
Things have no hold on the Soul. They have no access to it, cannot move or direct it.
It (Soul) is moved and directed by itself alone.
19.
The impediment too action advances action.
20.
What stands in the Way becomes the Way.
20.
When you think you've been injured...show the offender where he went wrong.
22.
How many unkind people have you been kind to?
31.
Nothing belongs to you but your flesh et blood - and nothing else is under your control.
33.
Don 't let others hold you back.
34.
Limit your desires to locate goodness.
34.
True good fortune is what you make for yourself.
Good Fortune: good character, good intensions, et good actions.
37.
________________________________________________
BOOK V1
Dying too, is one of our assignments in life. There as well: 'to do what needs doing.'
2.
Pride is a master of deception: you think you're occupied in the weightiest business...that's when he has you in his spell.
13.
Which of the things around us should we value when none of them can offer a firm foothold?
15.
What is it in ourselves that we should prize?
16.
All that public praise amounts to is a clacking of tongues.
16.
The elements move upward, downward, in all directions.
The motion of virtue is different - deeper.
It moves at a steady pace on a road hard to discern...and always forward.
17.
...the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance.
21.
Fight to be the person philosophy tried to make you.
30.
The only thing that isn't worthless: to live this life out truthfully and drightly. And be patient with those who don't.
47.
Ambition means trying your well being to what other people say or do.
51.
Practice really hearing what people say.
53.
No one can keep you from living as your nature requires.
58.
___________________________________________________
BOOK V11
EVIL: The same old thing.
1.
Remember that our own worth is measured by what we devote our energy to.
3.
Don't be ashamed to need help.
7.
Everything is interwoven and the web is holy; none of its parts are unconnected.
9.
Straight...not straightened.
12.
No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be good.
15.
To feel affection for people even when they make mistakes is uniquely human.
22.
Treat what you don't have as nonexistent.
27.
Stop being jerked like a puppet.
29.
Other people's mistakes? Leave them to their makers.
29.
Why should we feel anger at the world?
As if the world would notice!
38.
Don't pay attention to other people's minds.
55.
Now the main thing we were made for is to work with others.
55.
Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now...take what's left and live it properly.
56.
When faced with a choice, remember our business is with things that really matter.
58.
Dig Deep; the water - goodness - is down there.
And as long as you keep digging, it will keep bubbling up.
59.
Look at who they really are, the people whose approval you long for, and what their minds are really like. Then you won't blame the ones who mistakes they can't help and you won't feel the need for their approval.
62.
Place your own well being in your own hands.
67.
It's silly to try to escape other people's faults.
They are inescapable. Just try to escape your own.
71.
To be of use to others is natural.
74.
_____________________________________________
BOOK V111
You can hold your breath until you turn blue, but...they'll still go on doing it.
4.
...speak the truth as you see it. But with kindness, with humility without hyprocrisy.
5.
Don't be overheard complaining about life at Court. Not even to ourself.
9.
Remorse is annoyance at yourself for having past up something that's to your benefit.
10.
No truly good person would feel remorse at passing up pleasure.
10.
Apply them to everything that happens. Physics. Ethics. Logic.
13.
BLAME NO ONE!
17.
Stick to what's in front of you - idea, acction, utterance.
22.
Three relationships:
1 - the body you inhabit
2- with the Divine, the Cause of all things
3. with the people around you
27.
You have to assemble your life for yourself action by action.
32.
What doesn't transmit light creates its own darkness.
57.
_________________________________________
BOOK V1111
Injustice is a kind of blasphemy.
1.
To lie deliberately is to blaspheme - the liar commits deceit and thus injustice.
1.
Nature gave man the resources to distinguish between true and false.
And he neglected them, and now, he can't tell the difference.
1.
If we want to follow nature, to be of one mind with it, we need to share its indifference.
1.
To do harm is to do y ourself harm.
4.
To do an injustice is to do yourself an injustice - it degrades you.
4.
You can also commit injustice by doing nothing.
4.
Concrete objects can pull free of the earth more easily than humans can escape humanity.
9.
A rock thrown in the air. It looses nothing by coming down, gain nothing by going up.
17.
Leave other people's mistakes where they lie.
20.
You participate in a society by your existence.
23.
To decompose is to be recomposed.
35.
If they've injured you, then they're the ones who suffer for it.
38.
Pray not to feel fear.
40.
As an antidote to unkindness, nature gave us kindness.
42.
By doing a favor and expecting something in return, instead look to the action itself for y our reward.
42.
___________________________________________________
BOOK X
Whatever happens to you has been waiting to happen since the beginning of time.
The twining strands of fate wave both of them together: your own existence and the things that happen to you.
5.
If you can see the road, follow it.
12.
Stop talking about what a good man is like, just be one.
16.
Bear in mind all of this has happened before.
And will happen again - the same plot from beginning to end, the identical staging.
....only the people are different.
27.
When faced with other people's bad behavior, turn around and ask when ' you' have acted like that.
30.
So long as the Law is safe, so is the city - and the citizen.
33.
None of us has much time.
34.
How many traits do you have that would make a lot of people glad to be rid of you?
36.
Remember that what pulls the strings is within - hidden from us.
38.
____________________________________________________________
BOOK X1
How can we do what justice requires if we are distracted by things that don't matter, if we are naive, gullible, inconstant?
10.
Some despises me.
That's their problem.
13.
They flatter one another out of contempt and their desire to rule one another makes them bow and scrape.
14.
False straight forwardness is like a knife in the back.
15.
None of us is forbidden to pursue our own good.
16.
You have to know an awful lot before you can judge other people's actcions with real understanding.
18.
Before long, all of us will be laid out side by side.
18.
How much more damage anger and grief do than the things that cause them.
18.
To be drawn toward what is wrong and self-indulgent, toward anger and fear and pain is to revolt against nature.
20.
Mastery ofreading and writing requires a master.
Still more so Life.
29.
______________________________________________________________
BOOK X11
Your 3 components: body, breath, mind.
Two are yours in trust, to the 3rd alone you have clear title.
3.
Practice even what seems impossible.
6.
If it's not right, don't do it. If it's not true, don't say it.
17.
It's time you realize that you have something in you more powerful and miraculous than the things that affect you and make you dance like a puppet.
19.
You're in control.
22.
Nothing belongs to anyone.
26.
So make your exit with grace - the same grace shown to you.
36.
THE END
Dying too, is one of our assignments in life. There as well: 'to do what needs doing.'
2.
Pride is a master of deception: you think you're occupied in the weightiest business...that's when he has you in his spell.
13.
Which of the things around us should we value when none of them can offer a firm foothold?
15.
What is it in ourselves that we should prize?
16.
All that public praise amounts to is a clacking of tongues.
16.
The elements move upward, downward, in all directions.
The motion of virtue is different - deeper.
It moves at a steady pace on a road hard to discern...and always forward.
17.
...the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance.
21.
Fight to be the person philosophy tried to make you.
30.
The only thing that isn't worthless: to live this life out truthfully and drightly. And be patient with those who don't.
47.
Ambition means trying your well being to what other people say or do.
51.
Practice really hearing what people say.
53.
No one can keep you from living as your nature requires.
58.
___________________________________________________
BOOK V11
EVIL: The same old thing.
1.
Remember that our own worth is measured by what we devote our energy to.
3.
Don't be ashamed to need help.
7.
Everything is interwoven and the web is holy; none of its parts are unconnected.
9.
Straight...not straightened.
12.
No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be good.
15.
To feel affection for people even when they make mistakes is uniquely human.
22.
Treat what you don't have as nonexistent.
27.
Stop being jerked like a puppet.
29.
Other people's mistakes? Leave them to their makers.
29.
Why should we feel anger at the world?
As if the world would notice!
38.
Don't pay attention to other people's minds.
55.
Now the main thing we were made for is to work with others.
55.
Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now...take what's left and live it properly.
56.
When faced with a choice, remember our business is with things that really matter.
58.
Dig Deep; the water - goodness - is down there.
And as long as you keep digging, it will keep bubbling up.
59.
Look at who they really are, the people whose approval you long for, and what their minds are really like. Then you won't blame the ones who mistakes they can't help and you won't feel the need for their approval.
62.
Place your own well being in your own hands.
67.
It's silly to try to escape other people's faults.
They are inescapable. Just try to escape your own.
71.
To be of use to others is natural.
74.
_____________________________________________
BOOK V111
You can hold your breath until you turn blue, but...they'll still go on doing it.
4.
...speak the truth as you see it. But with kindness, with humility without hyprocrisy.
5.
Don't be overheard complaining about life at Court. Not even to ourself.
9.
Remorse is annoyance at yourself for having past up something that's to your benefit.
10.
No truly good person would feel remorse at passing up pleasure.
10.
Apply them to everything that happens. Physics. Ethics. Logic.
13.
BLAME NO ONE!
17.
Stick to what's in front of you - idea, acction, utterance.
22.
Three relationships:
1 - the body you inhabit
2- with the Divine, the Cause of all things
3. with the people around you
27.
You have to assemble your life for yourself action by action.
32.
What doesn't transmit light creates its own darkness.
57.
_________________________________________
BOOK V1111
Injustice is a kind of blasphemy.
1.
To lie deliberately is to blaspheme - the liar commits deceit and thus injustice.
1.
Nature gave man the resources to distinguish between true and false.
And he neglected them, and now, he can't tell the difference.
1.
If we want to follow nature, to be of one mind with it, we need to share its indifference.
1.
To do harm is to do y ourself harm.
4.
To do an injustice is to do yourself an injustice - it degrades you.
4.
You can also commit injustice by doing nothing.
4.
Concrete objects can pull free of the earth more easily than humans can escape humanity.
9.
A rock thrown in the air. It looses nothing by coming down, gain nothing by going up.
17.
Leave other people's mistakes where they lie.
20.
You participate in a society by your existence.
23.
To decompose is to be recomposed.
35.
If they've injured you, then they're the ones who suffer for it.
38.
Pray not to feel fear.
40.
As an antidote to unkindness, nature gave us kindness.
42.
By doing a favor and expecting something in return, instead look to the action itself for y our reward.
42.
___________________________________________________
BOOK X
Whatever happens to you has been waiting to happen since the beginning of time.
The twining strands of fate wave both of them together: your own existence and the things that happen to you.
5.
If you can see the road, follow it.
12.
Stop talking about what a good man is like, just be one.
16.
Bear in mind all of this has happened before.
And will happen again - the same plot from beginning to end, the identical staging.
....only the people are different.
27.
When faced with other people's bad behavior, turn around and ask when ' you' have acted like that.
30.
So long as the Law is safe, so is the city - and the citizen.
33.
None of us has much time.
34.
How many traits do you have that would make a lot of people glad to be rid of you?
36.
Remember that what pulls the strings is within - hidden from us.
38.
____________________________________________________________
BOOK X1
How can we do what justice requires if we are distracted by things that don't matter, if we are naive, gullible, inconstant?
10.
Some despises me.
That's their problem.
13.
They flatter one another out of contempt and their desire to rule one another makes them bow and scrape.
14.
False straight forwardness is like a knife in the back.
15.
None of us is forbidden to pursue our own good.
16.
You have to know an awful lot before you can judge other people's actcions with real understanding.
18.
Before long, all of us will be laid out side by side.
18.
How much more damage anger and grief do than the things that cause them.
18.
To be drawn toward what is wrong and self-indulgent, toward anger and fear and pain is to revolt against nature.
20.
Mastery ofreading and writing requires a master.
Still more so Life.
29.
______________________________________________________________
BOOK X11
Your 3 components: body, breath, mind.
Two are yours in trust, to the 3rd alone you have clear title.
3.
Practice even what seems impossible.
6.
If it's not right, don't do it. If it's not true, don't say it.
17.
It's time you realize that you have something in you more powerful and miraculous than the things that affect you and make you dance like a puppet.
19.
You're in control.
22.
Nothing belongs to anyone.
26.
So make your exit with grace - the same grace shown to you.
36.
THE END
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