I picked up a beautiful copy of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius in a cute bookstore in Korea (Chiltern Publishing, translated by A.S.L Farquharson).

I purchased it mostly on a whim - it’d been a while since I’d read any true classics, and the bind was truly delightful (it’s this beautifully embossed, textured cover with a gilt silver coating across the paper edges).

The book overall? It’s filled with Stoic aphorisms and pithy existential ruminations. How ‘meditative’ that is to modern sensibilities is up to the individual. Though you do get the occasional good nugget of advice like:

The mountain mouse and the town mouse, and the fright and scurry of the latter.¹

Though it must be said that it truly is surreal to read a piece of text immortalised in the canon of literature. In that vein, it was fascinating to see lacunae (“[corrupted text missing]”) mid-sentence. I always wonder what happened to that particular excerpt and how and why it became lost to the sands of time.

Well, I guess one epithet is indeed true enough - don’t judge a book by its cover.

There are some selected quotes that touch on themes of honesty, existentialism and metaphysics that I liked the gist of:

• Continually and, if possible, on the occasion of every imagination, test it by natural science, by psychology, by logic.
• Speak both in the senate and to every man of whatever rank with propriety, without affectation. Use words that ring true.
• The Universal Nature felt an impulse to create a world; and now either everything that comes into being arises by way of necessary consequence, or even the sovereign ends to which the ruling principle of the world directs its own impulse are devoid of reason. To remind yourself of this will make you clamer in the face of many accidents.
• The sun appears to be poured down and indeed is poured in every direction but not poured out. For this pouring is extension, and so its beams are called rays from their being extended. Now you may see what kind of thing a ray is by observing the sun’s light streaming through a chink into a darkened room. For it is stretched in a straight line, and rests so to speak upon any solid body that meets it and cuts off the flow of air beyond. It rests there and does not glide off or fall. The pouring and diffusion of the understanding then should be similar, in no way a pouring out, but an extension, and it should not rest forcibly or violently on obstacles that meet it nor yet fall down, but stand still and illuminate the object that receives it; for that which does not reflect it will rob itself of the light.