Quotes by Marcus Aurelius

Marcus Aurelius ruled Rome from 161 to 180, through plague, war on the Danube frontier and a revolt by one of his own generals. He kept a private notebook in Greek, addressed to nobody, reminding himself to be patient, to expect difficulty, and to stop caring what people thought of him. It was never meant to be published. That it survives as the Meditations is an accident, and the reason it reads less like philosophy than like a man arguing with himself at the end of a long day.