LXXX. 119 Lessons From Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
119 lessons for a distinguished life.
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Today is Marcus Aurelius’ birthday! I’ve read his book, Meditations, about 86 times, across different translations and formats and it has always been as enriching as ever. The timelessness of the wisdom gives me something to reflect on in every season and I’m so grateful for that opportunity.
To celebrate, here are some of my favorite and poignant quotes from this private diary, a book we weren’t meant to read, assorted into various themes. I hope its as therapeutic and delightful to you as it has been for me in writing this.
Table of Contents:
I. On the Dichotomy of Control
II. On Time & Procrastination
III. On Focus, Clarity, Purpose (Why We Are Here) & Working
IV. On Dealing with Difficult People
V. On the Sovereign Soul, Virtue & Rationality
VI. On Death, Happiness & Living Well
VII. On Self-Control, Endurance & How to Handle Pain
VIII. On Amor Fati
IX. On Gratitude
X. On Change
XI. On Nature, Beauty & Poetry
I. On the Dichotomy of Control
“Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been.” — Meditations 4.7.
Harm isn’t automatic, for between impulse and action we have a chance to make a choice. It’s not stitched into the insult, the loss, the betrayal. Harm only happens if we accept it—if we agree to feel wounded, agree to feel diminished. If we decide to react poorly to the situation. But without that internal signature, the event remains just an event. No wound, no scar. “You don't have to turn this into something. It doesn't have to upset you,” he says.
“That things have no hold on the soul. They stand there unmoving, outside it. Disturbance comes only from within—from our own perceptions.” — Meditations 4.4.
Events happen. Success, failure, insults, losses—they all stand there, inert, outside the gates of the soul. They have no hands. They don’t reach in. They don’t drag us into despair or rage. The only force that disturbs us is our own consent—our decision to interpret, exaggerate, attach meaning that wounds us.
“To locate goodness in thinking and doing the right thing, and to limit your desires to that.” — Meditations 5.34.
When we limit our ambition to mastering our reason and behavior, life simplifies. It’s a simple concept but not easy.
“Just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn’t matter. Cold or warm. Tired or well-rested. Despised or honored. Dying . . . or busy with other assignments.” — Meditations 6.2.
Sometimes I question the value of working, or going to the gym, telling myself I don’t have to, that I’m too tired and I don’t feel like it. But no condition excuses us from doing what’s right. Whether we’re exhausted, ignored, celebrated, or facing death, our duty remains the same. Stoicism isn’t about ideal circumstances. It’s about consistency. The right action doesn’t depend on how we feel or how others treat us — it depends only on our judgment and integrity.
“The mind is that which is roused and directed by itself. It makes of itself what it chooses. It makes what it chooses of its own experience.” — Meditations 6.8.
I’ve been through a lot of pain in my life. And if I hadn’t programmed my mind to decide what the events meant, I don’t know where I’d be right now. This quote is about sovereignty. Our mind is self-governing. It decides what meaning to assign, what attitude to adopt, and what response to give, regardless of what happens. Pain, praise, failure, luck—none of it defines us unless we allow it. We shape our experience by how we interpret it. That power is always ours and no one can take it from us.
“When jarred, unavoidably, by circumstances, revert at once to yourself, and don’t lose the rhythm more than you can help. You’ll have a better grasp of the harmony if you keep on going back to it.” — Meditations 6.11
This lesson was hammered in me when doing Surgery. You don’t panic when you see blood spurting from the arteries— disarray only makes things worse. You just pick an artery forceps, clamp the bleeder and go on helping the patient. Disruptions will happen. That’s life. But we don’t have to stay scattered. The moment we’re shaken, we return inward, to reason, to virtuous action, to control. The more often we return, the quicker we regain balance. Self-command isn’t never being thrown off—it’s learning how to come back faster, more energetic and confident, every time.
“If you can’t stop prizing a lot of other things? Then you’ll never be free—free, independent, imperturbable. Because you’ll always be envious and jealous, afraid that people might come and take it all away from you. Plotting against those who have them—those things you prize. People who need those things are bound to be a mess—and bound to take out their frustrations on the gods. Whereas to respect your own mind—to prize it—will leave you satisfied with your own self, well integrated into your community and in tune with the gods as well—embracing what they allot you, and what they ordain.” — Meditations 6.16
I’ve felt miserable every time I cared about my subscriber count or how what I published performed and more centered and happy when I didn’t care and focused on writing my next piece. As long as we keep assigning value to things outside us—what we own, how we’re seen, who wins—we hand over control. Not just of our mood, but of our identity. We become reactive, insecure, and suspicious. We fear loss because our sense of self depends on what’s not ours in the first place. That’s the quiet root of misery. Freedom isn’t having more. It’s needing less. It’s shifting the prize inward—to our judgment, our principles, our actions. When we do that, we stop fighting the world and start working with it. Life no longer feels like a threat. It becomes something we can meet with composure, even love.
“I do what is mine to do; the rest doesn’t disturb me.” — Meditations 6.22
Not because we don’t care, but because we know the line between what we control and what we don’t. Holding that line is our discipline. Staying within it is our freedom.
“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. Much of our bad behavior stems from trying to apply those criteria. If we limited “good” and “bad” to our own actions, we’d have no call to challenge God, or to treat other people as enemies.” —Meditations 6.41
Most of our suffering doesn’t come from events—it comes from our judgments about them. The moment we call something outside us “good,” we tie our peace to chance. The moment we call something “bad,” we turn life itself into an opponent. We cast villains where there are none. We wage war with reality. And in doing so, we turn ourselves into victims of our own expectations. But if we strip “good” and “bad” down to their rightful place—our intentions, our conduct—we recover agency. We stop accusing others. We stop bargaining with fate. We become hard to offend, harder to hurt, and impossible to enslave.
“Forget the future. When and if it comes, you’ll have the same resources to draw on—the same logos.” — Meditations 7.8
I’ve often feared what will happen to me or my loved ones in the future, especially when life is already chaotic. I’m afraid it might get worse. Then I realize it’s only in my head. We don’t need to rehearse and panic about imaginary battles in the future, we need to sharpen the tool that will face them—the mind and our strength. The future doesn’t require panic. It requires preparation, and trust in our capacity to respond.
“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.” — Meditations 7.14
I get a lot of confidence from this quote. For if I have the right tools in my mind to make good of misfortune, let it come and I’ll take care of it. I refuse to live in anxiety or fear under the tyranny of someone or something. Events don’t hurt us, they just happen. The pain begins when we personalize them, when we say, this happened to me, instead of this simply happened. That small shift in phrasing is the birth of unnecessary suffering. The Stoic insight is radical: nothing is truly against us unless we enlist ourselves in the drama. The layoff, the breakup, the insult, they hit the outer layer. Only our interpretation makes them cut deeper. We are not at the mercy of events, we are at the mercy of our interpretation of events. And we can always interpret them as good for us, as natural, as inevitable.
“No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be good. Like gold or emerald or purple repeating to itself, “No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be emerald, my color undiminished.” — Meditations 7.15
The world will provoke us. People will misunderstand us, mistreat us, test us. That’s irrelevant. Our task is not to mirror their behavior—it’s to hold our shape. Just as gold stays gold, no matter who strikes it, we stay aligned with our nature. Our principles aren’t decorations—they’re identity. We don’t react to others. We return to ourselves.
“In all that happens, keep before your eyes those who experienced it before you, and felt shock and outrage and resentment at it.
And now where are they? Nowhere.
Is that what you want to be like? Instead of avoiding all these distracting assaults—leaving the alarms and flight to others—and concentrating on what you can do with it all?
Because you can use it, treat it as raw material. Just pay attention, and resolve to live up to your own expectations. In everything. And when faced with a choice, remember: our business is with things that really matter.” — Meditations 7.58
This is a reminder that outrage is unoriginal. Others have met the same misfortunes, burned with the same emotions—and vanished without changing a thing. Their fury didn’t outlast them. It didn’t fix the world. It just drained them and ruined their reputation. We can either be another name in that forgotten chorus—or we can do something rarer: refuse to be distracted. Refuse to get angry. Refuse to waste time on what doesn’t serve the life we’re building. Every challenge is raw material. What matters is not how loud it is—but how well we use it.
“Adaptability adds, “You’re just what I was looking for.” Because to me the present is a chance for the exercise of rational virtue—civic virtue—in short, the art that men share with gods. Both treat whatever happens as wholly natural; not novel or hard to deal with, but familiar and easily handled.” — Meditations 7.68
Not just enduring fate, but even welcoming it. Adaptability sees every event as material, every challenge as an invitation. Not because life is easy, but because virtue thrives under pressure.
“External things are not the problem. It’s your assessment of them. Which you can erase right now. If the problem is something in your own character, who’s stopping you from setting your mind straight?
And if it’s that you’re not doing something you think you should be, why not just do it?
—But there are insuperable obstacles.
Then it’s not a problem. The cause of your inaction lies outside you.
—But how can I go on living with that undone?
Then depart, with a good conscience, as if you’d done it, embracing the obstacles too.” — Meditations 8.47
“Nothing but what you get from first impressions. That someone has insulted you, for instance. That—but not that it’s done you any harm. The fact that my son is sick—that I can see. But “that he might die of it,” no. Stick with first impressions. Don’t extrapolate. And nothing can happen to you.” — Meditations 8.49
Marcus is telling us: cut the story. Stop extrapolating the worst. That first impression, the raw fact — is manageable. Everything added after that is a liability. Speculation turns discomfort into despair. Assumptions turn worry into suffering. “Or extrapolate,” he says, “From a knowledge of all that can happen in the world.”
“The cucumber is bitter? Then throw it out. There are brambles in the path? Then go around them. That’s all you need to know. Nothing more.” —Meditations 8.50
This is the end of overthinking—of turning inconveniences into existential crises. Marcus is saying: not everything warrants an inquiry. Some things just are. A bitter cucumber isn’t a symbol of cosmic unfairness—it’s a bitter cucumber. Toss it. A bramble in the path isn’t the universe sabotaging your journey—it’s nature doing its thing. Walk around it. The demand to know why this exists is often just ego disguised as curiosity. We think the world owes us an explanation for its indifference. But it doesn’t.
“Objective judgment, now, at this very moment. Unselfish action, now, at this very moment. Willing acceptance—now, at this very moment—of all external events. That’s all you need.” —Meditations 9.6
A short list of all that’s required of us.
“Today I escaped from anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions—not outside.” —Meditations 9.13
Here, Marcus catches himself in the act of thinking like everyone else—and corrects it in real time. He starts with the language of escape, as if anxiety were some external predator. Then he stops. No, he says, that’s not it. I created this state. That’s the deep cut: anxiety isn’t imported. It’s manufactured internally—out of expectation, control fantasies, imagined futures. It’s a glitch in perception, not a condition of the world.
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II. On Time & Procrastination
“Remember how long you’ve been putting this off, how many extensions the gods gave you, and you didn’t use them. 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.” — Meditations 2.4
“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.” — Meditations 2.4
If not now, when?
“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?…So we need to hurry. Not just because we move daily closer to death but also because our understanding—our grasp of the world—may be gone before we get there.” — Meditations 3.1
You won’t be any younger than you are today. Get some urgency and intensity. Take your life in your hands and strive to live it as best as you can.
“Not to live as if you had endless years ahead of you. Death overshadows you. While you’re alive and able—be good.” — Meditations 4.16
III. On Focus, Clarity, Purpose (Why We Are Here) & Working
“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.” — Meditations 2.5
“Do external things distract you? Then make time for yourself to learn something worthwhile; stop letting yourself be pulled in all directions. But make sure you guard against the other kind of confusion. 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.” — Meditations 2.7
“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.” — Meditations 3.4
“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. Because most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time, and more tranquillity. Ask yourself at every moment, “Is this necessary?” But we need to eliminate unnecessary assumptions as well. To eliminate the unnecessary actions that follow.” — Meditations 4.24
“Love the discipline you know, and let it support you.” — Meditations 4.31
This ‘discipline’ is your chosen way of living—to perfect your character. It’s your commitment to reason over impulse, action over excuse, virtue over vice. It’s how you respond when life tests you. It’s not about rigid routines or perfection. It’s about returning, again and again, to what you know is right—even when it’s hard, even when no one sees. That discipline is your anchor. Your power. And your freedom.
“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?
—But we have to sleep sometime. . . .
Agreed. But nature set a limit on that—as it did on eating and drinking. And you’re over the limit. You’ve had more than enough of that. But not of working. There you’re still below your quota.
You don’t love yourself enough. Or you’d love your nature too, and what it demands of you. People who love what they do wear themselves down doing it, they even forget to wash or eat. Do you have less respect for your own nature than the engraver does for engraving, the dancer for the dance, the miser for money or the social climber for status? When they’re really possessed by what they do, they’d rather stop eating and sleeping than give up practicing their arts.
Is helping others less valuable to you? Not worth your effort?” — Meditations 5.1
Wake up and go get it! You were born for so much more. Elsewhere, he says,"Don’t you see how much you have to offer? And yet you still settle for less."
“Remember—your responsibilities can be broken down into individual parts as well. Concentrate on those, and finish the job methodically—without getting stirred up or meeting anger with anger.” — Meditations 6.26
I often procrastinated because I found projects overwhelming. But since I realized that it’s ok, and even wise, to do a little bit of my tasks within the crumble of the hours and minutes left to me everyday, my spirit lightened, I became more confident that I can handle anything. I’m even more ambitious. A little at a time is all it takes to accomplish the loftiest of goals.
“Everything is here for a purpose, from horses to vine shoots. What’s surprising about that? Even the sun will tell you, “I have a purpose,” and the other gods as well. And why were you born? For pleasure? See if that answer will stand up to questioning.” — Meditations 8.19
“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.
—But there are external obstacles. . . .
Not to behaving with justice, self-control, and good sense.
—Well, but perhaps to some more concrete action.
But if you accept the obstacle and work with what you’re given, an alternative will present itself—another piece of what you’re trying to assemble. Action by action.” — Meditations 8.32
“Why all this guesswork? You can see what needs to be done. If you can see the road, follow it. Cheerfully, without turning back. If not, hold up and get the best advice you can. If anything gets in the way, forge on ahead, making good use of what you have on hand, sticking to what seems right. (The best goal to achieve, and the one we fall short of when we fail.)” — Meditations 10.12
I use this when I’m trying to negotiate myself out of doing what’s right but hard. I then imagine how good it’ll feel to accomplish this goal. And when I do I feel so proud because it means I’ve just set up a domino for my next win. For the failure isn’t in falling short. It’s in dithering, second-guessing, and drifting from what we know we must do and is beneficial to us.
“Practice even what seems impossible. The left hand is useless at almost everything, for lack of practice. But it guides the reins better than the right. From practice.” — Meditations 12.6
IV. On Dealing with Difficult People
“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be