My Note
My highlights
193 highlights from Kindle. These are the lines I stopped at.
To bear in mind constantly that all of this has happened before. And will happen again—the same plot from beginning to end, the identical staging. Produce them in your mind, as you know them from experience or from history: the court of Hadrian, of Antoninus. The courts of Philip, Alexander, Croesus. All just the same. Only the people different.
37.
Today I escaped from anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions—not outside.
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?)
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?
Only the present—and even that can be minimized. Just mark off its limits. And if your mind tries to claim that it can’t hold out against that … well, then, heap shame upon it.
Then remind yourself that past and future have no power over you.
To accept it without arrogance, to let it go with indifference.
You have to assemble your life yourself—action by action. And be satisfied if each one achieves its goal, as far as it can. No one can keep that from happening.
27. Three relationships: i. with the body you inhabit; ii. with the divine, the cause of everything in all things; iii. with the people around you.
Blame no one. Set people straight, if you can.
With humility. Without hypocrisy.
Then do it, without hesitation, and speak the truth as you see it. But with kindness.
Remind yourself that your task is to be a good human being; remind yourself what nature demands of people.
The second step: Concentrate on what you have to do. Fix your eyes on it.
Nature controls it all. And before long you’ll be no one, nowhere—like
5. The first step: Don’t be anxious.
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.
But soon I’ll be dead, and the slate’s empty. So this is the only question: Is it the action of a responsible being, part of society, and subject to the same decrees as God?
In doing what human nature requires. —How? Through first principles. Which should govern your intentions and your actions. —What principles? Those to do with good and evil. That nothing is good except what leads to fairness, and self-control, and courage, and free will. And nothing bad except what does the opposite.
—Then where is it to be found?
You’ve wandered all over and finally realized that you never found what you were after: how to live. Not in syllogisms, not in money, or fame, or self-indulgence. Nowhere.
Be satisfied if you can live the rest of your life, however short, as your nature demands. Focus on that, and don’t let anything distract you.
Another encouragement to humility: you can’t claim to have lived your life as a philosopher—not even your whole adulthood. You can see for yourself how far you are from philosophy.
To be of use to others is natural. Then don’t object to what is useful to you—being of use.
Both treat whatever happens as wholly natural; not novel or hard to deal with, but familiar and easily handled.
To live life in peace, immune to all compulsion. Let them scream whatever they want. Let animals dismember this soft flesh that covers you. How would any of that stop you from keeping your mind calm—reliably sizing up what’s around you—and ready to make good use of whatever happens?
you don’t need much to live happily. And 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, obeying God.
61. Not a dancer but a wrestler: waiting, poised and dug in, for sudden assaults.
Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what’s left and live it properly.
And the third thing is to avoid rashness and credulity. The mind that grasps this and steers straight ahead should be able to hold its own.
the main thing we were made for is to work with others.
Don’t pay attention to other people’s minds. Look straight ahead, where nature is leading you—nature in general, through the things that happen to you; and your own nature, through your own actions.
Look at the past—empire succeeding empire—and from that, extrapolate the future: the same thing. No escape from the rhythm of events. Which is why observing life for forty years is as good as a thousand. Would you really see anything new?
Treat what you don’t have as nonexistent. Look at what you have, the things you value most, and think of how much you’d crave them if you didn’t have them.
When people injure you, ask yourself what good or harm they thought would come of it.
To feel affection for people even when they make mistakes is uniquely human. You can do it, if you simply recognize: that they’re human too, that they act out of ignorance, against their will, and that you’ll both be dead before long. And, above all, that they haven’t really hurt you. They haven’t diminished your ability to choose.
No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be good.
Let it happen, if it wants, to whatever it can happen to. And what’s affected can complain about it if it wants. It doesn’t hurt me unless I interpret its happening as harmful to me. I can choose not to.
Forget the future. When and if it comes, you’ll have the same resources to draw on—the same logos.
Don’t be ashamed to need help. Like a soldier storming a wall, you have a mission to accomplish.
Focus on what is said when you speak and on what results from each action.
our own worth is measured by what we devote our energy to.
1. 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. 2. You cannot quench understanding unless you put out the insights that compose it.
How much has been erased already.
58. No one can keep you from living as your nature requires. Nothing can happen to you that is not required by Nature.
Practice really hearing what people say. Do your best to get inside their minds.
Do your best to convince them. But act on your own, if justice requires it. If met with force, then fall back on acceptance and peaceability. Use the setback to practice other virtues. Remember that our efforts are subject to circumstances; you weren’t aiming to do the impossible. —Aiming to do what, then? To try. And you succeeded. What you set out to do is accomplished.
49. It doesn’t bother you that you weigh only x or y pounds and not three hundred. Why should it bother you that you have only x or y years to live and not more? You accept the limits placed on your body. Accept those placed on your time.
When you need encouragement, think of the qualities the people around you have: this one’s energy, that one’s modesty, another’s generosity, and so on.
So make up your mind who you’ll choose to work with.
You take things you don’t control and define them as “good” or “bad.” And so of course when the “bad” things happen, or the “good” ones don’t, you blame the gods and feel hatred for the people responsible—or those you decide to make responsible.
treat everything around you as a dream.
content with the basics—in living quarters, bedding, clothes, food, servants … how hard he worked, how much he put up with … his ability to work straight through till dusk—because of his simple diet (he didn’t even need to relieve himself, except at set times) … his constancy and reliability as a friend … his tolerance of people who openly questioned his views and his delight at seeing his ideas improved on … his piety—without a trace of superstition … So
not prone to backbiting, or cowardice, or jealousy, or empty rhetoric
Our lives are short. The only rewards of our existence here are an unstained character and unselfish acts.
Fight to be the person philosophy tried to make you.
remain straightforward, upright, reverent, serious, unadorned, an ally of justice, pious, kind, affectionate, and doing your duty with a will.
Disgraceful: for the soul to give up when the body is still going strong.
Alexander the Great and his mule driver both died and the same thing happened to both. They were absorbed alike into the life force of the world, or dissolved alike into atoms.
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.
to lay them bare and see how pointless they are, to strip away the legend that encrusts them.
6. The best revenge is not to be like that.
But true good fortune is what you make for yourself. Good fortune: good character, good intentions, and good actions.
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.
Why are you still here? Sensory objects are shifting and unstable; our senses dim and easily deceived; the soul itself a decoction of the blood; fame in a world like this is worthless.
Soon you’ll be ashes, or bones. A mere name, at most—and even that is just a sound, an echo. The things we want in life are empty, stale, and trivial.
You can live here as you expect to live there. And if they won’t let you, you can depart life now and forfeit nothing. If the smoke makes me cough, I can leave. What’s so hard about that? Until things reach that point, I’m free. No one can keep me from doing what I want. And I want what is proper to rational beings, living together.
Neither player-king nor prostitute.
23. Keep in mind how fast things pass by and are gone—those that are now, and those to come. Existence flows past us like a river: the “what” is in constant flux, the “why” has a thousand variations. Nothing is stable, not even what’s right here. The infinity of past and future gapes before us—a chasm whose depths we cannot see. So it would take an idiot to feel self-importance or distress. Or any indignation, either. As if the things that irritate us lasted.
way.
What stands in the way becomes the
The impediment to action advances action.
ii. Things gravitate toward what they were intended for.
you can lead a good one.
i. Anywhere you can lead your life,
The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts.
What you’ve been after is something else again—something unnatural.
Remember: philosophy requires only what your nature already demands.
9. Not to feel exasperated, or defeated, or despondent because your days aren’t packed with wise and moral actions. But to get back up when you fail, to celebrate behaving like a human—however imperfectly—and fully embrace the pursuit that you’ve embarked on.
Don’t you see how much you have to offer—beyond excuses like “can’t”? And yet you still settle for less.
Practice the virtues you can show: honesty, gravity, endurance, austerity, resignation, abstinence, patience, sincerity, moderation, seriousness, high-mindedness.
No one could ever accuse you of being quick-witted.
The others obey their own lead, follow their own impulses. Don’t be distracted. Keep walking. Follow your own nature, and follow Nature—along the road they share.
You don’t love yourself enough. Or you’d love your nature too, and what it demands of you.
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. BOOK 5 1. At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work—as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for—the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?” —But it’s nicer here.… So you were born to feel “nice”? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?
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.
—It’s unfortunate that this has happened. No. It’s fortunate that this has happened and I’ve remained unharmed by it—not shattered by the present or frightened of the future. It could have happened to anyone.
To pass through this brief life as nature demands. To give it up without complaint.
In short, know this: Human lives are brief and trivial.
Everything that happens is as simple and familiar as the rose in spring, the fruit in summer: disease, death, blasphemy, conspiracy … everything that makes stupid people happy or angry.
Time is a river, a violent current of events, glimpsed once and already carried past us, and another follows and is gone.
It needs to realize that what happens to everyone—bad and good alike—is neither good nor bad. That what happens in every life—lived naturally or not—is neither natural nor unnatural.
Let the part of you that makes that judgment keep quiet even if the body it’s attached to is stabbed or burnt, or stinking with pus, or consumed by cancer.
In your capacity to see it. Stop doing that and everything will be fine.
—Then where is harm to be found?
Nothing that goes on in anyone else’s mind can harm you. Nor can the shifts and changes in the world around you.
Look into their minds, at what the wise do and what they don’t.
Then what should we work for? Only this: proper understanding; unselfish action; truthful speech. A resolve to accept whatever happens as necessary and familiar, flowing like water from that same source and spring.
The rest—“unknown, unasked-for” a minute after death. What is “eternal” fame? Emptiness.
Everything fades so quickly, turns into legend, and soon oblivion covers it.
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.
But most of all, run through the list of those you knew yourself. Those who worked in vain, who failed to do what they should have—what they should have remained fixed on and found satisfaction in.
And that life they led is nowhere to be found.
Love the discipline you know, and let it support you. Entrust everything willingly to the gods, and then make your way through life—no one’s master and no one’s slave.
A philosopher without clothes and one without books. “I have nothing to eat,” says he, as he stands there half-naked, “but I subsist on the logos.” And with nothing to read, I subsist on it too.
Poor: (adj.) requiring others; not having the necessities of life in one’s own possession.
Something happens to you. Good. It was meant for you by nature, woven into the pattern from the beginning. Life is short. That’s all there is to say. Get what you can from the present—thoughtfully, justly.
And then you might see what the life of the good man is like—someone content with what nature assigns him, and satisfied with being just and kind himself.
But we need to eliminate unnecessary assumptions as well. To eliminate the unnecessary actions that follow.
Ask yourself at every moment, “Is this necessary?”
Because most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time, and more tranquillity.
“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.
22. Not to be driven this way and that, but always to behave with justice and see things as they are.
20. Beautiful things of any kind are beautiful in themselves and sufficient to themselves. Praise is extraneous. The object of praise remains what it was—no better and no worse. This applies, I think, even to “beautiful” things in ordinary life—physical objects, artworks.
19. People who are excited by posthumous fame forget that the people who remember them will soon die too. And those after them in turn. Until their memory, passed from one to another like a candle flame, gutters and goes out. But suppose that those who remembered you were immortal and your memory undying. What good would it do you? And I don’t just mean when you’re dead, but in your own lifetime. What use is praise, except to make your lifestyle a little more comfortable?
The tranquillity that comes when you stop caring what they say. Or think, or do. Only what you do. (Is this fair? Is this the right thing to do?)
17. Not to live as if you had endless years ahead of you. Death overshadows you. While you’re alive and able—be good.
It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character. Otherwise it cannot harm you—inside or out.
7. Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been.
“The world is nothing but change. Our life is only perception.”
That everything you see will soon alter and cease to exist.
That things have no hold on the soul. They stand there unmoving, outside it. Disturbance comes only from within—from our own perceptions.
Look at things like a man, like a human being, like a citizen, like a mortal.
So keep this refuge in mind: the back roads of your self. Above all, no strain and no stress. Be straightforward.
The emptiness of all those applauding hands.
Or is it your reputation that’s bothering you? But look at how soon we’re all forgotten.
Nowhere you can go is more peaceful—more free of interruptions—than your own soul.
People try to get away from it all—to the country, to the beach, to the mountains. You always wish that you could too. Which is idiotic: you can get away from it anytime you like. By going within.
Our inward power, when it obeys nature, reacts to events by accommodating itself to what it faces—to what is possible. It needs no specific material. It pursues its own aims as circumstances allow; it turns obstacles into fuel. As a fire overwhelms what would have quenched a lamp. What’s thrown on top of the conflagration is absorbed, consumed by it—and makes it burn still higher.
To welcome with affection what is sent by fate. Not to stain or disturb the spirit within him with a mess of false beliefs. Instead, to preserve it faithfully, by calmly obeying God—saying nothing untrue, doing nothing unjust. And if the others don’t acknowledge it—this life lived with simplicity, humility, cheerfulness—he doesn’t resent them for it, and isn’t deterred from following the road where it leads: to the end of life. An end to be approached in purity, in serenity, in acceptance, in peaceful unity with what must be.
Write off your hopes, and if your well-being matters to you, be your own savior while you can.
Doctors keep their scalpels and other instruments handy, for emergencies. Keep your philosophy ready too—ready to understand heaven and earth. In everything you do, even the smallest thing, remember the chain that links them. Nothing earthly succeeds by ignoring heaven, nothing heavenly by ignoring the earth.
If it’s time for you to go, leave willingly—as you would to accomplish anything that can be done with grace and honor. And concentrate on this, your whole life long: for your mind to be in the right state—the state a rational, civic mind should be in.
You won’t need solitude—or a cast of thousands, either. Above all, you’ll be free of fear and desire.
So make your choice straightforwardly, once and for all, and stick to it. Choose what’s best.
the applause of the crowd, high office, wealth, or self-indulgence. All of them might seem to be compatible with it—for a while. But suddenly they control us and sweep us away.
To stand up straight—not straightened.
Let the spirit in you represent a man, an adult, a citizen, a Roman, a ruler. Taking up his post like a soldier and patiently awaiting his recall from life. Needing no oath or witness.
He does only what is his to do, and considers constantly what the world has in store for him—doing his best, and trusting that all is for the best. For we carry our fate with us—and it carries us.
And nothing natural is evil.
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.
Then what can guide us? Only philosophy.
The body and its parts are a river, the soul a dream and mist, life is warfare and a journey far from home, lasting reputation is oblivion.
i. that everything has always been the same, and keeps recurring, and it makes no difference whether you see the same things recur in a hundred years or two hundred, or in an infinite period; ii. that 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.
The present is the same for everyone; its loss is the same for everyone; and it should be clear that a brief instant is all that is lost.
To understand those things—how stupid, contemptible, grimy, decaying, and dead they are—that’s what our intellectual powers are for.
But 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—and hence neither good nor bad.
11. You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think. If the gods exist, then to abandon human beings is not frightening;
8. Ignoring what goes on in other people’s souls—no one ever came to grief that way. But if you won’t keep track of what your own soul’s doing, how can you not be unhappy?
People who labor all their lives but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse toward are wasting their time—even when hard at work.
6. Yes, keep on degrading yourself, soul. But soon your chance at dignity will be gone. Everyone gets one life. Yours is almost used up, and instead of treating yourself with respect, you have entrusted your own happiness to the souls of others.
5. Concentrate every minute like a Roman—like a man—on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can—if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable. You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life? If you can manage this, that’s all even the gods can ask of you.
At some point you have to recognize what world it is that you belong to; what power rules it and from what source you spring; 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 will never return.
Remember how long you’ve been putting this off, how many extensions the gods gave you, and you didn’t use them.
Discard your thirst for books, so that you won’t die in bitterness, but in cheerfulness and truth, grateful to the gods from the bottom of your heart.
Stop allowing your mind to be a slave, to be jerked about by selfish impulses, to kick against fate and the present, and to mistrust the future.
To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions.
We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower.
When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own—not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him.
All things for which “we need the help of fortune and the gods.”
or become absorbed by logic-chopping, or preoccupied with physics.
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,
That I had someone—as a ruler and as a father—who could keep me from being arrogant and make me realize that even at court you can live without a troop of bodyguards, and gorgeous clothes, lamps, sculpture—the whole charade. That you can behave almost like an ordinary person without seeming slovenly or careless as a ruler or when carrying out official obligations.
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.
They saw him for what he was: a man tested by life, accomplished, unswayed by flattery, qualified to govern both himself and them.
I hope the results will bear out my conviction that what a Roman emperor wrote long ago for his own use can still be meaningful to those far removed from him in time and space.
ON THE BOOK OF MARCUS 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.
an unknown Byzantine poet
Death is not to be feared, Marcus continually reminds himself. It is a natural process, part of the continual change that forms the world.
The best revenge is not to be like that.
problem.
It is, in other words, not objects and events but the interpretations we place on them that are the
The discipline of perception requires that we maintain absolute objectivity of thought:
disciplines”: the disciplines of perception, of action and of the will.
“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 …”
Among the things for which he thanks the gods is that he was never “absorbed by logic-chopping, or preoccupied by physics” (1.17
than it does to Greek philosophers.
the application of the adjective “stoic” to a person who shows strength and courage in misfortune probably owes more to the aristocratic Roman value system
Early and middle Stoicism was a holistic system. It aimed to embrace all knowledge, and its focus was speculative and theoretical. Roman Stoicism, by contrast, was a practical discipline—not an abstract system of thought, but an attitude to life.
it was Stoicism that had the greatest appeal.
Of the major philosophical schools,
It is also an actual substance that pervades that world, not in a metaphorical sense but in a form as concrete as oxygen or carbon.
the logos is not simply an impersonal power that governs and directs the world.
Even actions which appear to be—and indeed are—immoral or unjust advance the overall design, which taken as a whole is harmonious and good. They, too, are governed by the logos.
In the same way, humans are responsible for their choices and actions, even though these have been anticipated by the logos and form part of its plan.
man is like a dog tied to a moving wagon. If the dog refuses to run along with the wagon he will be dragged by it, yet the choice remains his: to run or be dragged.
Logos operates both in individuals and in the universe as a whole. In individuals it is the faculty of reason. On a cosmic level it is the rational principle that governs the organization of the universe.1 In this sense it is synonymous with “nature,” “Providence,” or “God.” (When
More specifically, it is controlled and directed by an all-pervading force that the Stoics designated by the term logos.
the world is organized in a rational and coherent way.
philosophy also had a more practical dimension. It was not merely a subject to write or argue about, but one that was expected to provide a “design for living”—a set of rules to live one’s life by.
between 169 and 179 he had to cope with constant fighting on the frontier, the abortive revolt of Cassius, and the deaths of his colleague Verus; his wife, Faustina; and others.
States will never be happy until rulers become philosophers or philosophers become rulers. —PLATO, The Republic