#marcus-aurelius

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.
– Marcus Aurelius

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.

Marcus Aurelius

The best revenge against your enemy is not to become like your enemy.

– Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.6

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.

– Marcus Aurelius

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.

– Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Ergib dich nicht der Stimmung dessen, der dich beleidigt, und folge nicht dem Weg, auf den er dich schleppen möchte.

– Marcus Aurelius

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

– Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Today I have added Marcus Aurelius’ “Meditations” , translated by Gregory Hays. You can also access it via the menu bar in the “Stoicism” section.

“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”
– Marcus Aurelius

“Don’t waste the rest of your time here worrying about
other people—unless it affects the common good. It will
keep you from doing anything useful. You’ll be too
preoccupied with what so-and-so is doing, and why, and
what they’re saying, and what they’re thinking, and what
they’re up to, and all the other things that throw you off and
keep you from focusing on your own mind.

You need to avoid certain things in your train of thought:
everything random, everything irrelevant. And certainly
everything self-important or malicious. 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. And it
would be obvious at once from your answer that your
thoughts were straightforward and considerate ones—the
thoughts of an unselfish person, one unconcerned with
pleasure and with sensual indulgence generally, with
squabbling, with slander and envy, or anything else you’d be
ashamed to be caught thinking.”
– Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 3, Verse 4 (Gregory Hays)

“Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what’s left and live it properly. What doesn’t transmit light creates its own darkness.”
– Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“A rock thrown in the air. It loses nothing by coming down, gained nothing by going up.”
– Marcus Aurelius

The Meditations, by a Roman emperor who died in a plague named after him, has much to say about how to face fear, pain, anxiety and loss.

A great article from Donald Robertson, published by The Guardian:

Stoicism in the Time of Pandemic

Book 4

1. 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.

2. No random actions, none not based on underlying
principles.

Book 3

IN CARNUNTUM

1. Not just that every day more of our life is used up and less
and less of it is left, but this too: if we live longer, can we be
sure our mind will still be up to understanding the world—to
the contemplation that aims at divine and human knowledge?
If our mind starts to wander, we’ll still go on breathing, go
on eating, imagining things, feeling urges and so on. But
getting the most out of ourselves, calculating where our duty
lies, analyzing what we hear and see, deciding whether it’s
time to call it quits—all the things you need a healthy mind
for . . . all those are gone.

I have experimented with other exercises, but journaling is my primary Stoic exercise, although I journal a variety of ways.

One of the better starting points (not historically Stoic, but influenced by Stoicism) is the philosophical meditation routine from the The Philosopher’s Mail , although I personally bring more Stoic elements into it by, in addition to the questions listed there, I ask what the different experiences say about what I value, whether these values concern virtues/vices or externals, and what virtues and vices do apply.

In everything that you do, pause and ask yourself if death is a dreadful thing because it deprives you of this.

– Marcus Aurelius

Sales of works by ancient Roman Marcus Aurelius have seen a sharp uptick in recent months.

According to Penguin Random House, print sales of Meditations are up 28% for the first quarter of 2020 vs 2019, while print sales of Letters from a Stoic are up 42% for the same period. In the last four weeks, its ebook sales rose by 356%"

The Guardian: ‘Dress rehearsal for catastrophe’: how Stoics are speaking to locked-down readers.

Book 2

ON THE RIVER GRAN, AMONG THE QUADI

1. 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. We were born to work together like
feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and
lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at
someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions.

A New Translation, with an Introduction, by Gregory Hays. THE MODERN LIBRARY
NEW YORK.

Book 1

DEBTS AND LESSONS

1. MY GRANDFATHER VERUS

Character and self-control.

2. MY FATHER (FROM MY OWN MEMORIES AND HIS REPUTATION)

Integrity and manliness.

3. MY MOTHER

Her reverence for the divine, her generosity, her inability not
only to do wrong but even to conceive of doing it. And the
simple way she lived—not in the least like the rich.