Meditations
Marcus Aurelius
An emperor talking himself into doing the right thing. It was never meant to be read, which is why it's honest.
Marcus Aurelius was the most powerful man in the world when he wrote this, and it's mostly him telling himself off. They were private notes. A lot of them were written in army camps during long wars on the empire's northern border, and he never meant anyone else to read them. That's what makes the book strange and good. There's no audience to impress, just one person trying to be calmer and more useful than he was yesterday.
It opens with a list of the people he learned things from, and what each one taught him. Then it goes to reminders he clearly needed more than once. Every morning will bring people who are meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest and jealous, so expect it and don't let it change what you do. You're going to die, and so is everyone who remembers you, so stop chasing praise. Picture the whole of human life from far above, all the wars and weddings and arguments at once, and see how small today's problem looks from there.
He repeats himself a lot, and that's the point. He wasn't writing an argument. He was practising, the same way you'd run the same drill every day.
It's on the shelf because it shows you can have every reason to be arrogant and still work at being decent. The book is a record of someone doing that work, one note to himself at a time.
