Daily Stoic Sundays: 5 Life Changing Quotes from Marcus Aurelius

On today's Daily Stoic Sunday episode, Ryan goes over five of Marcus Aurelius' best quotes and describes how you can live up to his words. This episode is also brought to you by Raycon, maker of affordable earbuds with incredibly high-quality sound. Raycon earbuds are half the price of more-expensive competitors and sound just as good. With six hours of battery time, seamless Bluetooth pairing, and a great-fitting design, Raycon earbuds are perfect for working out, travel, conference calls, and more. Get 15% off your order when you purchase Raycon earbuds now, just visit buyraycon.com/stoic.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Weekend Edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something that can help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance. And here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We reflect. We prepare. We think deeply about the challenging issues of our time. And we work through this philosophy in a way that's more possible here when we're not rushing to work or to get the kids to school, when we have the time to think, to go for a walk,

• 0:46Ryan Holiday?

  to sit with our journals, and to prepare for what the future will bring.

• 0:54Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another Weekend episode of The Daily Stoic. Obviously, this is probably not a surprise to anyone listening to this, but I find Marcus Aurelius to be endlessly fascinating. I think back to the first moment that I pick up meditations almost 15 years ago now in my college apartment in Riverside, California. And just the power that those words had when they hit me. I've described it as being hit by a pile of bricks, and it's sort of shaking everything that I thought I knew about the world.

• 1:37Ryan Holiday?

  I feel so fortunate that I happened to have picked up the Gregory Hayes translation, which is done for the Modern Library. That's the one that I tend to recommend to people who are interested in sort of digging into Marcus Aurelius. What I wanted to do today was go through some of my favorite quotes from Meditations. And what I find, you'll listen, we sort of go through five, I think, of the most interesting, provocative Marcus Aurelius quotes. Some of these you've probably heard before. Obviously, they're quotes I've read many, many times. When I think about sort of my reaction to those quotes, when I first read them at 19, when I read them again in my mid 20s, when

• 2:18Ryan Holiday?

  I read them now as a father, as an author, as a person who's, you know, now, all of us are collectively experiencing something closer to the reality that Marcus Aurelius was experiencing when he wrote those words. I'm referring now to the pandemic, as we've talked about Marcus Aurelius writing Meditations during the Antonine Plague. And it's interesting to me, all the times that I read it, it almost never, it never fully penetrated my consciousness that the plague would be shaping what he was saying, because the idea of a pandemic was so incomprehensible, so far from our umwelt, to use an interesting German word,

• 3:02Ryan Holiday?

  our sort of experience, our way of understanding the world. But all of this is to tie into this interesting concept from Marcus that he connects to from Herakles, this idea that we don't, we don't ever step in the same river twice, because we're changing, the water's changing, everything is constantly moving past us and being remade. And so, these quotes, even if you've heard them before, even if you've read Meditations 100 times, I hope will strike you. I hope the sort of discussion of it will give you a little bit of perspective. And I hope, most of all, it inspires you to go and pick up Meditations, because it is one of those books you should read over and over again. It's why it remains. I've got a copy on my desk, got a copy on my bedside table. And it's just something

• 3:47Ryan Holiday?

  I return to every day or night or so. I try to, you know, flip through it. And I am struck by how differently these quotes resonate with me. So I hope everyone's doing well. I hope everyone's staying safe. I hope everyone's being smart. And I hope everyone is doing their reading. As Seneca would say, leisure without study, life without study is a tomb for a living person. So we'll do an analysis of some Seneca quotes coming up here soon. But for now, let's get in to some Marcus Aurelius.

• 4:19Ryan Holiday?

  There was no one like him, Marcus Aurelius, the last of the five good emperors. Marcus Aurelius was a student of Stoicism, an ancient school of philosophy founded in Athens in the early 3rd century B.C., on the belief that we don't control the world around us, we control only how we respond. Marcus was the leader of a world facing a pandemic which spanned 15 years. Civil unrest, wars on the border, cultural decadence, income inequality, and so much more. And so, it's easy to see why he was drawn to this philosophy. He compared himself to someone seeking relief from a rash or a burn, and that Stoicism was his soothing ointment, a warm lotion.

• 5:04Ryan Holiday?

  And that's why Marcus Aurelius tried to provide in Meditations, his only known work, a totally unique and peerless document in the annals of history, to pass on this ointment, this guidance, this medicine, to future generations. As Bran Blanchard, the historian, would note, "Few now care about the marches and counter marches of the Roman commanders. What the centuries have clung to is the notebook of thoughts of a man whose real life was largely unknown, who put down in the midnight dimness, not the events of the day or the plans of the morrow, but something of far more permanent interest, the ideals and the aspirations that a rare spirit lived by."

• 5:47Ryan Holiday?

  And that's what Stoicism was designed to be, medicine for the soul, relieving us of the vulnerabilities of life and restoring us with vigor to what we need to thrive. And so, here are five of the most powerful, life-changing quotes from Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher-king, that will help you be better today. "At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed," Marcus Aurelius said, "Tell yourself, 'I have to go to work.' As a human being, what do I have to complain of if I am going to do what I was born for, the things I was brought into this world to do? Or is this what I was created for, to huddle under the blankets and stay warm?" It is one of the most relatable moments in meditations.

• 6:32Ryan Holiday?

  This argument Marcus Aurelius was having with himself in the opening of Book Five. It's clearly an argument he had many times on many mornings, as many of us have. He knows he has to get out of bed, but so desperately wants to remain under the warm covers. It's relatable, but it's also impressive. Marcus didn't actually have to get out of bed. Being the emperor meant that he didn't have to do anything. He could have slept in every day without immediate consequence. No one would have docked his pay. No one would have asked him why he was late. And yet here Marcus was insisting that he rise early and get to work. Why? As Dante wrote in his epic poem, "Beneath the blanket is no way to fame.

• 7:14Ryan Holiday?

  You can't accomplish anything curled up under the covers." Marcus knew that winning the morning was key to winning the day and winning at life. He knew that being the most powerful man in the world still didn't exempt him from living as nature requires. He knew that his status didn't mean anything and that his obligations to it were waiting for him to wake up. He knew that sleeping in would only mean that he had a lot of catching up to do and that he had handed over control and was now in reactionary mode. And so it's simple. If you want to be productive, get more done, and be great, you have to get up early. "Our actions may be impeded," Marcus Aurelius wrote, "but there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions, because we can accommodate and adapt.

• 7:58Ryan Holiday?

  The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way." One way to go through life is to turn away from hardship. You can close your ears and eyes to what is unpleasant. You can take the easy way, foregoing difficulty whenever possible. The other way is the Stoic way. We can choose, we can train ourselves, we can see hardship as an opportunity, as grist for the mill, as a chance to learn about endurance, patience, resilience, and struggle. We can see it as a chance to prove our mettle, as a way of learning about people, or situations, or actions, or things. And Marcus- Aurelius believed in the latter approach.

• 8:41Ryan Holiday?

  He wrote about how fire turns everything that is thrown into it into flame. He says that obstacles are better seen as fuel. It's not about accepting hardship for the Stoics then, or resigning ourselves to it. Rather, it's a matter of agreeing to work with it, to decide to make the most of it, to see hardship as an opportunity and not as an obstacle. And in this way, we can turn what happens to us into fuel. We can be made better and brighter by everything that happens. We can turn the obstacle into the way. If at some point in your life, Marcus Aurelius wrote, if you should find anything better than justice, honesty, self-control and courage, if you find anything better than that, embrace it without reservation, it must be an extraordinary thing indeed.

• 9:26Ryan Holiday?

  While Marcus Aurelius was writing Meditations, Rome was invaded in a war followed that would last five years. The Tiber had one of its most severe floods in history, destroying homes and livestock, which brought famine into Rome. Eventually, winning that war, returning soldiers brought home with them a deadly contagion, which became known as the Antonine Plague. Crippled by famine and plague, numerous hostile tribes in the north seized the opportunity to band together and attack the Romans. For the remainder of his reign, he faced the twin evils of plague and war. And yet Marcus mentions none of these horrific events in his journal. He does, however, mention that there is no challenge, no problem so big that it prevents

• 10:06Ryan Holiday?

  him from responding with the four Stoic virtues, courage, moderation, justice and wisdom. That is, to not be afraid, not to give in to our baser instincts, not to put oneself above others, not to get lost in what is up close, but to see the bigger picture. He said that everything he faced was an opportunity to respond with those four virtues, which made even the most complex situations simple and straightforward. Just that you do the right thing, he said, the rest doesn't matter. Remember this principle, Marcus Aurelius wrote, when something threatens to cause you pain, the thing itself was no misfortune at all. To endure it and to prevail is a great good fortune. Things we didn't want to happen, they happened to all of us, including Marcus Aurelius.

• 10:48Ryan Holiday?

  A business deal falls through, a grade comes back that we didn't expect, a person we care about leaves us. Our instinct is to call these events unfortunate because they are not what we wanted. It makes sense, it's fortunate when you get what you want, it's unfortunate when for whatever reason you don't, right? Marcus Aurelius proposes a different way of looking at things. Instead of telling ourselves that we're unfortunate because our expectations were disappointed, he said we should do the opposite. "No, it's fortunate that this has happened," he says, "and I've remained unharmed by it, not shattered by the present or frightened of the future. It could have happened to anyone, but not everyone could have remained unharmed by it."

• 11:31Ryan Holiday?

  To a stoic, we're harmed only when our character is affected. We're only harmed when we let go of what we believe in or when we drop our own standards. It might not be desirable to lose money or a friend, to fail at something or be criticized, but how does that make us unfortunate? We haven't been deprived of our ability to respond, our character remains intact. There's no rule that says you have to freak out by this, be shattered by it, or that you have to start getting anxious about the future. No, you're still in control, you're still you, and that's very fortunate. "You could leave life right now," Marcus Aurelius said. "Let that determine what you do and say and think." Pierre Hadow called meditations "a collection of spiritual exercises",

• 12:15Ryan Holiday?

  and there is no exercise that Marcus does more than meditating on his mortality. Perhaps it was his own health issues that made him so acutely aware of death. Perhaps it was losing his father at an early age. Perhaps it was losing eight children. Perhaps it was the Antonine Plague that killed somewhere between 10 and 18 million people. Perhaps it was the realization in the power of memento mori, the ancient practice of reflection on mortality that goes back to Socrates, who said that the proper practice of philosophy is about nothing else but dying and being dead. Most people push back on the memento mori that Marcus Aurelius did as being morbid or dark. Most people want to avoid thinking about death. It's unpleasant, it's scary, it's sad.

• 12:58Ryan Holiday?

  Why would anyone want to think about a thing they don't want to happen? All of this misses the point. It's not about making you anxious about how few days you have left. The purpose is the opposite. It's to free you, to inspire you. It is the key to happiness that unlocks empowerment, gratitude, charity, and a bonus round attitude every moment of every day. Memento mori is the jolt that keeps us in the present moment. Marcus Aurelius liked to ask, who on earth would think of their mortality that they could only have a few minutes left on earth and go, yes, I should spend more time being upset or afraid or depressed? Our mortality isn't depressing, it's energizing. It turns down the volume on pointless, stupid, divisive matters we waste so much energy on, because in the light of death,

• 13:42Ryan Holiday?

  very little is worth getting angry or stressed or overwhelmed about. So keep reminding yourself, just as Marcus did, you could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think. There is a great story about Marcus Aurelius late in life, well into his reign as emperor, attending a lecture by the philosopher Sextus. He overheard someone taunt him for still needing to be taught the philosophy he had dedicated some 40 years of his life to. "Learning is a good thing," Marcus replied. "From Sextus the philosopher, I shall learn what I do not yet know." For the Stoics, Stoicism was an ongoing process designed to be practical and routine. It wasn't a philosophy you read once and magically understood at the soul level.

• 14:25Ryan Holiday?

  No, it was a lifelong pursuit that required diligence and repetition and concentration. It was a journey. Wisdom wasn't something you obtained. It wasn't something conferred on you after some given amount of time. Wisdom was something to be pursued. You never arrived at a final destination because something new would always come up. You never mastered material either, because, as Marcus said, everything is constantly changing. So now that you have heard these five quotes, it is time that you journal about them, think about them, return to them over and over and over again. We never step in the same river twice. We always get better every time we think about these five wise quotes from Marcus Aurelius.

• 15:08Ryan Holiday?

  If you like the podcast that we do here, and you want to get it via email every morning, you can sign up at dailystoic.com/email.