Marcus Aurelius · Meditations
Meditations, Book II
13 passages of this book in Stoïque, each with its reference.
Book II opens with the morning: ‘Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial’ (Meditations, II, 1). Its seventeen chapters are short, and the writer addresses himself as ‘thou’ throughout. What a man is, ‘a little flesh and breath, and the ruling part’ (II, 2); how long he has been putting things off (II, 4); doing what is in hand ‘as a Roman and a man’ (II, 5); the possibility of departing from life this very moment (II, 11); Theophrastus on offences committed through desire and through anger (II, 10); the Cynic Monimus on opinion (II, 15).
The last chapter reduces human life to a point of time and a flux of substance, and names philosophy as the one thing able to conduct a man (II, 17). In Long’s 1862 text the book closes with ‘This in Carnuntum’, a town of Pannonia on the Danube where, according to Long’s footnote, Antoninus stayed during the war with the Marcomanni.
Passages of this book in the app
Begin the morning by saying to yourself: I shall meet the meddler, the ungrateful, the arrogant, the deceitful, the envious, the unsociable. All this happens to them through their ignorance of good and evil.
— MARCUS AURELIUS · MEDITATIONS, II, 1
after Long, 1862
Remember how long you have been putting these things off, and how often the gods have given you an opportunity you did not use. You must see at last of what universe you are a part, and that a limit of time is fixed for you: if you do not use it to clear the clouds from your mind, it will pass, and you will pass, and it will never return.
— MARCUS AURELIUS · MEDITATIONS, II, 4
after Long, 1862
At every moment think steadily, as a Roman and a man, to do what you have in hand with perfect and simple dignity, with affection, freedom and justice, and to free yourself from all other thoughts. You will be free of them if you do every act of your life as if it were the last.
— MARCUS AURELIUS · MEDITATIONS, II, 5
after Long, 1862
Do outward things distract you? Give yourself time to learn something new and good, and stop being whirled around.
— MARCUS AURELIUS · MEDITATIONS, II, 7
after Long, 1862
Since you may leave life at this very moment, order every act and thought accordingly.
— MARCUS AURELIUS · MEDITATIONS, II, 11
after Long, 1862
Consider what death is: if you look at it in itself and, by reflection, break into their parts all the things the imagination attaches to it, you will judge it to be nothing but a work of nature. And whoever is afraid of a work of nature is a child.
— MARCUS AURELIUS · MEDITATIONS, II, 12
after Long, 1862
Even if you were to live three thousand years, and as many times ten thousand, remember that no one loses any life other than the one he now lives, nor lives any other than the one he now loses.
— MARCUS AURELIUS · MEDITATIONS, II, 14
after Long, 1862
The book in numbers
- Chapters in Long’s 1862 edition
- 17
- Passages of this book in the app
- 13
- Passages of Marcus Aurelius in the app
- 166
- Editions cited on this page
- George Long, 1862
Chapters of this book in the app
Each reference names the book and the chapter, the same way the app prints it under the passage.
The 13 passages of Book II and the 153 other passages by Marcus Aurelius are free in Stoïque, each with its reference, on the Home Screen and the Lock Screen.