Meditations

“Marcus Aurelius opens meditations by thanking the teacher who taught him to read attentively, and who loaned him the copy of Epictetus that shaped the rest of his life.”

“And I was like, does Marx really talk about Pompeii at all in meditations?”

“And I just thought of the baths that Mark Street was talking about in meditations, that Seneca talks about in meditations, washing off the dust of earthly life.”

“You know, all Mark's realist stuff about, you know, you try to stay present. He says that your child is sick, but not that they might die of it.”

“and in the pages of his journal, he was writing notes to himself about controlling his temper, about getting up early, about quenching his desires, his urges, about being kind to people, about working hard.”

“And so in meditations, which he's writing here in this very building, he's trying to stay humble. He's trying to remind himself what's actually important. He's trying to avoid being stained.”

“And then um um Marcus Aurelius starts off meditations with, you know, the people whose lives he's tried to learn from.”

“These things that are sort of accidental byproducts like even meditations.”

“i think about something that Mark talks about in meditations where he goes like he was a person who had these chronic health issues”

“I went and I read this past week I read the meditations.”

“I mean, that's what's so Mark's meditations is so fascinating because here you have this guy fundamentally exempted now from all the rules of society.”

“and and and Marcus really says so it would it it would take an idiot to feel angry at any of this as if any of it lasts right”

“what if I have one book If it's meditations Or if if if it's some ancient Chinese text if if we're looking at some Lau or something you think well that one thing answers everything”

“I mean you read somebody like Marcus Aurelius what he's really talking about is there like he is one of the most emotionally Adept writers that I've ever come across”

“And, uh, got back, went back to reading poetry and Marcus Aurelius and stuff and just kind of got some of my perspective back.”

“One of my favorite passages in Meditations is where Marcus lists great conquerors and generals, followed by various philosophers. He concludes with Socrates, stating ultimately that Socrates is the greater because his mind was his own.”

“There's a line in Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations where he thanks one of his mentors, saying, ‘Did you say Marcus Aurelius?’”

“In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius wrote that when you tuck your child in at night, remind yourself they might not survive until morning.”

“There’s certainly a part of it, but there's that famous passage in Meditations where he says, 'The impediment to action advances action; what stands in the way becomes the way.'”

“I've read them and different interpretations of them. If you want to understand 'Meditations', that's a really great place to start. Well, I just thought about the timelessness: you have the same job as them.”

“Then I jumped over to Stoicism, and you know, it's very similar. I mean, Marcus Aurelius's book is called 'Meditations'. It's a different form of meditation, but the idea of sitting and observing your thoughts, whether it's like this or like that, is fundamentally the same practice.”

“Take all the spiritual and philosophical parts out of 'Meditations', and it's just a brilliant work of art and thought. Here you have this man writing private thoughts to himself that he wasn't intending to publish; it shouldn't be so good. It's so good!”

“It's like watching the greatest musician give the performance of their life in private and nobody ever knows about it. That's what 'Meditations' is. It feels like even if you just read it for the writing itself, for the prose, there's poetry in pretty much every line.”

“He notes that this is a bit of nature's inadvertence; the baker isn't intending for that to happen, but it does. I've come to understand that that's what 'Meditations' is. Marcus Aurelius is performing this private inward act of reminding himself what he believes, what's important, what he should be doing, what he needs to get better at.”

“The accidental byproduct of that is this book, 'Meditations', which you and I are reading 2,000 years later. He said that posthumous fame was impossible and worthless, and he's accidentally seeking it—not because of his accomplishments on the battlefield or his policies as emperor, but because of this private and singular act.”

“I think it's important to figure out how to read 'Meditations' because it does get misread. I was listening to a podcast recently where Mary Beard, the great classicist, talked about how she does not like Marcus and doesn't like 'Meditations'. She said it's almost like Instagram quotes or memes.”

“A lot of the lines and words in 'Meditations' are not Marcus's own, they're something he heard from a philosophy teacher or read in a book. It's important that we see it as what it was; it's kind of a commonplace book. But I get to do that part in public, and then my journaling is much more personal and”

“When attacked online, I remind myself I've got a healthy life and love around me, which alleviates my anger. The best revenge is living well, as Marcus suggested.”

“That's always what I've liked the most about Marcus Aurelius' meditations; he's talking to himself, but if he was really just talking to himself, would he have written it down?”

“And speaking of books, just 'cause I know he's a through line in the movie, one of the characters quotes him a few times. What's your relationship with Marcus Aurelius's 'Meditations'?”

“One of my favorite quotes from Marcus’s Meditations is where he states that ambition ties your success to the actions of others.”

“We could imagine that that's what Marcus Aurelius is doing in his meditations. What's weird about meditations is that it's not a book for the reader; it's a book for the writer.”

“There's a great line in Marcus Aurelius's 'Meditations'—things aren't asking to be judged by you. What you see in entertainment television is the same; it's like how they question if LeBron James should retire—it’s his decision, not ours, and these prompts are designed to create conflict.”

“Mark said when you do someone a good turn and they receive it, don't ask for recognition.”

“this is it like when i read meditations for the first time i was 19 i was sitting in my college apartment and i was just like not only have i never read anything like this”

“i'm in the middle of uh reading uh meditations while i'm listening to the audiobook of meditations by marcus”

“and then next thing you know you're like reading his books yeah you're reading you know uh meditations by Marcus Aurelio wild book”

“and he was striving to do better in his own personal life and that was what meditations was all about his book”

“marcus aurelius book meditations is really really interesting because it's almost 2 000 years old”

“marcus aurelius is uh meditations i'm in the middle of that right now”

“and so marcus says uh in meditations that ambition is tying your well-being to what other people say or do”

“I mean, they—like most of what I feel like the Stoics talk about, let's take Meditations.”

“Most of where like Marcus Aurelius talks about Justice, like literally dozens of times in Meditations, um, he also talks about doing the right thing dozens of times in Meditations and the common good.”

“Yeah, Marcus really has this quote in Meditations where he says, uh, the fruit of this life is good character and acts for the common good.”

“In Meditations, there's a passage where Marcus Aurelius realizes that whatever you think you want is inside of you right now. You can retreat and go on vacation inside your own soul instead of looking for external escapes.”

“And I get my copy of Meditations; it comes from Amazon. I had to wait a couple of days for it to arrive 'cause Prime didn't exist yet, you know? And I read this passage in Meditations from Marcus Aurelius: let me find it.”

“To have news from far-flung provinces, to have endless correspondence, and to feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders—to read Meditations, you're like, 'This is not good for a person to be in this position.'”

“I think one of the most fascinating quotes in Meditations is when Marcus says, 'You obviously love yourself more than other people.'”

“One interesting passage in Marcus Aurelius' 'Meditations' is when he says, "Today I escaped anxiety."”

“We often want to read a hundred books when we should master three, maybe Jobs's biography by Walter Isaacson, or 'The Prophet' by Kahlil Gibran, or 'Meditations' by Marcus Aurelius, one of my favorite books. Minimizing our focus can be incredibly powerful; build your life around a few crucial things.”

“Part of it, but Meditations, I don't believe, was ever written with the intent of it being distributed.”

“I think one thing that struck me as I'm reading Meditations is Marcus Aurelius thanks his philosophy teacher, Rusticus, who gives him his copy of Epictetus's lectures.”

“and he becomes the person that you read about in the pages of Meditations, right?”

“The practice of stepping back and thinking can provide insights that profoundly impact one's life, as seen by the timeless relevance of Aurelius' 'Meditations'.”

“There's a passage in Meditations where Marcus loses multiple children, an experience that was gratuitous even for that time when most people did as well.”

“The more I think about Marcus’s 'Meditations', the more in awe I am of it. In one sense, the book should be inaccessible and incomprehensible to us; you have the most powerful man in the world from an empire 2,000 years ago.”

“Marcus Aurelius’s line resonates: it's a shame for the mind to give up when the body is still going; as long as you're here, find a way to be useful. I appreciate your writing about Marcus Aurelius.”

“But to dedicate his work to all those who supported him and mention their names—that's a practice I wanted to emulate in my own book. His life was about giving back.”

“In meditations, there's a passage where Marcus Aurelius is saying exactly that: 'I know you think you want to get away from it all, like to the country or the beach or whatever.' He says, 'But actually, whatever you need is inside of you right now.'”

“I've been listening to Marcus aurelius's uh meditations in the sauna recently that's that's amazing you listen to this dude that lived 2 thousand [ __ ] years ago and he's just spitting knowledge”

“There's probably no theme that Marcus talks about in Meditations more than change. So I'll read you some passages, and we'll riff on them.”

“The Stoics talk a ton about discipline, courage, wisdom; Marcus writes Meditations, which are notes to himself to be better at his job and in life.”

“You know, there's a passage in meditations that hit me especially as a college kid; he talks about how hard it is to wake up in the morning.”

“Yeah, there's a passage in Marcus's Meditations where he says, you know, as you tuck your child in at night, you should say to yourself, they will not survive to the morning. And he's like meditating on the loss that the most precious thing in the world to you…”

“uh Marcus Aurelius the Roman Emperor got a little closer with his meditations because he did talk about things like here's how I'd like to uh I'd like to develop these character traits and cultivate these things in my life”

“There's a line towards the end of meditations, which Marcus Aurelius probably wrote as he's getting close to death.”

“Um and so there's some speculation even that that's where some of the weird, kind of beautiful, mystic passages of Meditations come from is he's like on opium.”

“It is now incumbent upon me as a parent to not only do the best that I can, but make sure that the best that I am giving Traveler is the best for him, not the best for me, and what systems that I was given will work, and what systems I have the ability to— I was telling a”

“I control whether I am jealous and anxious and awful and all of these things, and to me, that is the whole of Meditations could just be that passage.”

“And it's, it's such a very stoic idea in Meditation, Marcus Aurelius says something like, 'Remember, things are not asking to be judged by you.'”

“I think about that; obviously, the book that's influenced my life the most is Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. What I think is so surreal about that book is you have the most powerful person in the world, 2000 years ago, writing a journal to himself, never intending it to be published.”

“There's this beautiful line in the beginning of Meditations, and it's called 'Debts and Lessons'. It’s like all the things Marcus learned from people in his life, and it's really remarkable to think that he wasn't publishing it.”

“That's actually from Heraclitus who Marcus Aurelius quotes in Meditations, and the idea is, yeah, we're not only do we not step in the same river twice because the river's changing, but we're also changing.”

“There's some irony in that Marcus Aurelius's book is called 'Meditations,' but he's not doing any meditating in the sense that we understand it now. Right?”

“shredkowski says the Mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting what stands in the way becomes the way meditations 520 Keep fighting man that's really good all right I'm a big Marcus Aurelius fan”

“and then of course there were plenty of what you might call self-help treatises during Greek and Roman times yeah Marcus Aurelius right this goes all the way back and maybe to snob in you would feel better reading meditations or reading the essays of Michelle de montane then reading Dale Carnegie”

“And also, I think like I've talked about this before, but one of the reasons I think Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is this totally unique philosophy book is that he wasn't writing a philosophy book. He was writing notes to himself about what he thought, and in that way the specific is actually more universal.”

“was it Marcus Aurelius who said the whole universe is change in life itself is but what we deem it I think it was”

“In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius asks yourself at every moment, is this task essential?”

“Sure, no, I mean that’s what’s so incredible about what Marcus manages to do in Meditations.”

“Marcus Aurelius refers to the common good like 40 times in his meditations. My favorite line says what’s bad for the hive is bad for the bee; to me, if businesses could think that way, and I try to think about that with my business—do I pay people a fair wage?”

“In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius talks about how people who love what they do wear themselves down doing it. You have to love what you do; I love writing, clearly you love football.”

“One of my favorite passages in 'Meditations' by Marcus Aurelius shows the most powerful man in the world reflecting on himself. You get this magnificent glimpse into what’s running through the head of someone so powerful.”

“and now let me leave you with some words from marcus aurelius the art of living is more like wrestling than dancing”

“In Meditations, you know, Marcus Aurelius had an extremely bad stomach ailment; we don't know what it is, but there's some evidence that he was prescribed opium for it; it was so serious.”

“i want to take my i'll get some marcus aurelius thing it's like you know i guess the trick to life is figuring out what's in our control and what's not”

“uh i like the i wrote this down uh the marcus aurelius quote Love the people with whom fate brings you together and do so with all of your heart”

“like marcus aurelius i would say one big fan of meditations um you know stoic philosophy”

“when you read anything that's ancient but classic Marcus Aurelius meditations or you know whatever it might be you realize that the for the problems that you attribute as side effects of the 21st century are just inbuilt parts of our nature that everyone's been fighting with for forever”

“I mean but and the thing is is it's been around years when you look at like an you know Marcus Aurelius meditations or stoic philosophy and they're talking about you know dialogue being both external in turn also the the conversations that go on inside your own head are just as important as the conversations you would have with”

“if you Marcus Aurelius meditations have existed for thousands of years Why do you think people still read them”