# Read the first page of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius Read the opening of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius free, no signup. Private Stoic reflections on character, duty, mortality, and mastering the mind. - Page: https://uncovered.ink/read/meditations-marcus-aurelius - Genre: Stoic philosophy - Year: 180 - ISBN: 9780141965369 - Read it blind (cover and title hidden): https://uncovered.ink/?b=9780141965369&s=read-page - Buy: https://bookshop.org/a/125786/9780141965369 - Borrow: https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=9780141965369 ## The opening @@CHAP@@ Book One 1. Courtesy and serenity of temper I first learnt to know from my grandfather Verus. 2. Manliness without ostentation I learnt from what I have heard and remember of my father. 3. My mother set me an example of piety and generosity, avoidance of all uncharitableness – not in actions only, but in thought as well – and a simplicity of life quite unlike the usual habits of the rich. 4. To my great-grandfather I owed the advice to dispense with the education of the schools and have good masters at home instead – and to realize that no expense should be grudged for this purpose. 5. It was my tutor who dissuaded me from patronizing Green or Blue* at the races, or Light or Heavy† in the ring; and encouraged me not to be afraid of work, to be sparing in my wants, attend to my own needs, mind my own business, and never listen to gossip. 6. Thanks to Diognetus, I learnt not to be absorbed in trivial pursuits; to be sceptical of wizards and wonderworkers with their tales of spells, exorcisms, and the like; to eschew cockfighting and other such distractions; not to resent outspokenness; to familiarize myself with philosophy, beginning with Bacchius and going on to Tandasis and Marcian; to write compositions in my early years; and to be ardent for the plank-and-skin pallet and other rigours of the Greek discipline. 7. From Rusticus I derived the notion that my character needed training and care, and that I must not allow myself to be led astray into a sophist’s enthusiasm for concocting speculative treatises, edifying homilies, or imaginary sketches of The Ascetic or The Altruist. He also taught me to avoid rhetoric, poetry, and verbal conceits, affectations of dress at home, and other such lapses of taste, and to imitate the easy epistolary style of his own letter written at Sinuessa to my mother. If anyone, after falling out with me in a moment of temper, showed signs of wanting to make peace again, I was to be ready at once to meet them half-way. Also I was to be accurate in my reading, and not content with a mere general idea of the meaning; and not to let myself be too quickly convinced by a glib tongue. Through him, too, I came to know Epictetus’s Dissertations, of which he gave me a copy from his library. 8. Apollonius impressed on me the need to make decisions for myself instead of depending on the hazards of chance, and never for a moment to leave reason out of sight. He also schooled me to meet spasms of acute pain, the loss of my son, and the tedium of a chronic ailment with the same unaltered composure. He himself was a living proof that the fieriest energy is not incompatible with the ability to relax. His expositions were always a model of clarity; yet he was evidently one who rated practical experience and an aptitude for teaching philosophy as the least of his accomplishments. It was he, moreover, who taught me how to accept the pretended favours of friends without either lowering my own self-respect or giving the impression of an unfeeling indifference. 9. My debts to Sextus include kindliness, how to rule a household with paternal authority, the real meaning of the Natural Life, an unselfconscious dignity, an intuitive concern for the interests of one’s friends, and a good-natured patience with amateurs and visionaries. The aptness of his courtesy to each individual lent a charm to his society more potent than any flattery, yet at the same time it exacted the complete respect of all present. His manner, too, of determining and systematizing the essential rules of life was as comprehensive as it was methodical. Never displaying a sign of anger nor any kind of emotion, he was at once entirely imperturbable and yet full of kindly affection. His approval was always quietly and undemonstratively expressed, and he never paraded his encyclopaedic learning. ## Books with a similar feel - [Freedom from the Known by Jiddu Krishnamurti & Mary Lutyens](https://uncovered.ink/read/freedom-from-the-known-jiddu-krishnamurti-and-mary-lutyens.md) - [The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down by Haemin Sunim, Chi-Young Kim & Young-Cheol Lee](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-things-you-can-see-only-when-you-slow-down-haemin-sunim-chi-young-kim-and-young-cheol.md) - [Who Will Cry When You Die? by Robin Sharma](https://uncovered.ink/read/who-will-cry-when-you-die-robin-sharma.md) - [An End to Suffering by Pankaj Mishra](https://uncovered.ink/read/an-end-to-suffering-pankaj-mishra.md) - [The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-tao-of-physics-fritjof-capra.md) - [Ultralearning by Scott H. Young](https://uncovered.ink/read/ultralearning-scott-h-young.md) --- Source: Uncovered (https://uncovered.ink). 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