Skip to content
MARCUS AURELIUS

The Meditations

The Meditations is a cornerstone of Stoic philosophy. However, because it was Aurelius' personal journal, its prose is dense and unorganized.

This unique edition organizes Aurelius' timeless wisdom thematically to illuminate key Stoic principles from courage to wisdom to memento mori.

Stylishly designed and boldly illustrated, this bestselling pocket edition is portable, inspirational, and perfect for anyone new to Stoicism or seeking a fresh perspective on this foundational classic.

SPECIAL OFFER
Any 3 books for $30.
Use code: 3BOOKS 

View the Book

A New Edition

If “absolute power corrupts absolutely” is an iron rule of governance, then Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius was undoubtedly the exception. The collection of journals which we now call The Meditations contains approximately 485 passages written over the course of Aurelius’ extraordinary nineteen-year reign.

While each one is worth reading (simply because such a remarkable man saw fit to write them down), the fact that they are personal journal entries necessarily means that the content can be disjointed, sometimes redundant, and devoid of any narrative structure to assist the reader. This illustrated pocket edition of The Meditations seeks to address these issues.

View the Book

12 Thematic Chapters

To provide a clearer narrative and to help focus its concepts, the number of passages are reduced to a quarter of the original count, and the remaining passages are reorganized into twelve chapters, each focusing on an essential Stoic principle. 

The text is compiled from several translations (Long, Farquharson, Casaubon, Haines, Collier), and thoughtfully edited for better readability.

This new edition contains twelve illustrated passages, one per chapter, to better illuminate their meaning and to provide an aesthetic element to complement the work.

View the Book

It's Personal

As you read through these passages, you may find Aurelius to be unfashionably preoccupied with personal responsibility. It is helpful to remember that this was his journal, and as such, the intended target of his merciless critiques is always himself. The Meditations is not an outward-facing political treatise, but a deeply personal calling to discover what a well-disciplined mind can accomplish in the face of adversity.

If this edition helps you to find the “flow from that other world” of Stoicism, it will have achieved its goal, and I encourage you to read the complete work next, but most importantly, as Aurelius urges us, to “ever dig.”

View the book
MARCUS AURELIUS

Cover Art

In our cover illustration, we drew inspiration from one of Notre Dame's stained glass rose windows, a fractured relic in the shape of a Greco-Roman plumed helmet.

Like the stoic's ideal state of mind, stained glass is at once orderly and beautiful. Ideas radiate out from central first principles in a natural and inevitable succession of deductions and balancing forces.

At the helmet's edge I added pictograms representing the four pillars of stoicism (Courage, Justice, Temperance and Wisdom) as well as other central stoic concepts: Memento Mori ("Remember Mortality"), and Amor Fati ("Love Fate"), Unity and the Inner Citadel.

Buy the Print