Meditations
Decide its fate
The record
Time
An eveningA season46,196 words in George Long’s translation, 3.1 hours at 250 words a minute: two-thirds the length of a typical book on the shelf.
Getting in
Walk right inSteep climbBook One is a list of thanks to family and teachers; readers report tiring later, once the repetition sets in.
What it gives
Plot and actionIdeas to live byIn the first 30 Goodreads reviews, none credit the plot and 18 the ideas or a change in how they live.
One of a kind
Others do thisNothing else doesA book blog calls Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic, also on the shelf at 254 pages, more expansive than the Meditations.
The case for it
on his sentences
“I have said that it is by its accent of emotion that the morality of Marcus Aurelius acquires a special character, and reminds one of Christian morality. The sentences of Seneca are stimulating to the intellect; the sentences of Epictetus are fortifying to the character; the sentences of Marcus Aurelius find their way to the soul.”
Matthew Arnold · Essays in Criticism, 1865 on the translation
“I found the one by Gregory Hays, which was much clearer”
five stars · Goodreads on the repetition
“lessons must often be repeated to be truly understood”
five stars · Goodreads on facing death
“Unlike other self-help writers he doesn’t flinch at reminding us about our own mortality”
five stars · Goodreads
The case against
on the repetition
“The perpetual repetition of the same reasonings, the thousand images under which he seeks to represent for himself the vanity of all things, the proofs, often naive, of universal frivolity; all bear witness to the conflicts in which he had to engage, in order to extinguish all desire in himself. At times there results a touch of bitterness and sorrow; the reading of Marcus Aurelius fortifies, but it does not console.”
Ernest Renan · Marcus Aurelius, translated by William G. Hutchison, 1904 on the death passages
“The Meditations about death are a little repetitive, often rehashing the same message”
four stars · a book blog on the lack of order
“I wasn’t able to discern any clear theme or order to any of the books”
three stars · a book blog on the maxims
“it has become indistinct and universal, suitable for fridge magnets or motivational posters anywhere”
unrated · Goodreads
