Marcus Aurelius: Meditations 🕊️

Private notes to himself on Stoic philosophy.

The complete works, line by line. ⚖️

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[Marcus Aurelius: Meditations 🕊️ @Become_Stoic]

5. How to act:

- Never under compulsion,
- Out of selfishness,
- Without forethought,
- With misgivings.

Don't gussy up your thoughts.

No surplus words or unnecessary actions.

Let the spirit in you represent a man, an adult, a citizen, a Roman,

a ruler.

[Marcus Aurelius: Meditations 🕊️ @Become_Stoic]

40. Implements, tools, equipment. If they do what they were designed for, then they work. Even if the person who designed them is miles away.But with naturally occurring things, the force that designed them is present within them and remains there.

[Marcus Aurelius: Meditations 🕊️ @Become_Stoic]

39. The things ordained for you teach yourself to be at one with those. And the people who share them with you treat them with love.With real love.

[Marcus Aurelius: Meditations 🕊️ @Become_Stoic]

38. Keep reminding yourself of the way things are connected,of their relatedness. All things are implicated in one another and in sympathy with each other. This event is the consequence of some other one. Things push and pull on each other, and breathe together, and are one.

[Marcus Aurelius: Meditations 🕊️ @Become_Stoic]

So dont look at them as alien to what you revere, but focus on the source that all things spring from.37. If youve seen the present then youve seen everything as its been since the beginning, as it will be forever. The same substance, the same form. All of it.

[Marcus Aurelius: Meditations 🕊️ @Become_Stoic]

36a. Everything derives from it that universal mind either as effect or consequence. The lions jaws, the poisonous substances, and every harmful thing from thorns to mud . . .are by-products of the good and beautiful.

[Marcus Aurelius: Meditations 🕊️ @Become_Stoic]

36. Asia and Europe: distant recesses of the universe.The ocean: a drop of water.Mount Athos: a molehill.The present: a split second in eternity.Minuscule, transitory, insignificant.

[Marcus Aurelius: Meditations 🕊️ @Become_Stoic]

Should we as humans feel less responsibility to our logos than builders or pharmacists do? A logos we share with the divine?

[Marcus Aurelius: Meditations 🕊️ @Become_Stoic]

34. Thieves, perverts, parricides, dictators: the kind of pleasures they enjoy. 35. Have you noticed how professionals will meet the man on the street halfway but without compromising the logos of their trade?

[Marcus Aurelius: Meditations 🕊️ @Become_Stoic]

33. Its normal to feel pain in your hands and feet, if youre using your feet as feet and your hands as hands. And for a human being to feel stress is normal if hes living a normal human life.And if its normal, how can it be bad?

[Marcus Aurelius: Meditations 🕊️ @Become_Stoic]

It cannot discriminate among them.Nothing has meaning to my mind except its own actions.Which are within its own control. And its only the immediate ones that matter. Its past and future actions too are meaningless.

[Marcus Aurelius: Meditations 🕊️ @Become_Stoic]

31. Awaken; return to yourself. Now, no longer asleep,knowing they were only dreams, clear-headed again, treat everything around you as a dream.32. I am composed of a body and a soul.Things that happen to the body are meaningless.

[Marcus Aurelius: Meditations 🕊️ @Become_Stoic]

Define your values

Define your view on the wold

Define your goals and the success you want to achieve

If you don't someone else will define them for you.

https://t.co/QBMSJDn2u8

#stoic

[Marcus Aurelius: Meditations 🕊️ @Become_Stoic]

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 that when your time comes, your conscience will be as clear as his.

[Marcus Aurelius: Meditations 🕊️ @Become_Stoic]

. . . how hard he worked, how much he put up with . . . his ability to work straight through till dusk because of his simple diet (he didnt even need to relieve himself, except at set times) . . .his constancy and reliability as a friend . . .

[Marcus Aurelius: Meditations 🕊️ @Become_Stoic]

. . . not prone to backbiting, or cowardice, or jealousy, or empty rhetoric . . . content with the basics in living quarters, bedding, clothes, food, servants

[Marcus Aurelius: Meditations 🕊️ @Become_Stoic]

how he couldnt be hurried . . . how he wouldnt listen to informers . . . how reliable he was as a judge of character,and of actions

[Marcus Aurelius: Meditations 🕊️ @Become_Stoic]

And how he never let things go before he was sure he had examined them thoroughly, understood them perfectly . . . the way he put up with unfair criticism, without returning it . . .