Meditations: A New Translation (Modern Library)

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Bertrand Russell found them contradictory and inconsistent, evidence of a "tired age" where "even real goods lose their savour. Roman stoicism, by contract, was a practical discipline—not an abstract system of thought, but an attitude of life.

Meditations is really good because even though you know Marcus was writing to himself sometimes it feels like he is writing directly to you. I used several modern editions of the Greek text, of which the most recent is by the German scholar Joachim Dalfen. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done and there is nothing new under the sun. His "Meditations" is a loosely-organized set of thoughts relating to his stoic philosophy, now in an acclaimed new translation.The reading speed is crazy fast for this kind of material, the narrator makes no pauses between sentences. His fingers caressed the smooth leather of the binding as he took it back and slipped it under the breadbox. I was deliberately trying to move away from the rather stodgy feel of some earlier translations, which I think make Marcus sound too much like a sage. Do you think this is an attempt at emphasis through repetition or is there a subtleness that the depth of Greek (or Latin) allows and English does not?

Aurelius’ writings on fame seemed to resonate with me in Waterfield’s translation, the death writings stuck out more when I read the Hays translation.We are driven by a deep understanding of continuous improvement tools and the opportunities they represent. Of the remainder of his childhood and his early adolescence we know little more than can be gleaned from the Meditations. We tend to see the same themes and metaphors popping up over and over again–time is like a river; this will only affect you if you let it, and so on. We are providing our personal opinion and it should not be taken as legal, financial, or tax advice. At the same time, the work felt a little dimished by the fact it was written by an emperor, in the sense that it is easy for a person of the most privilege to talk about doing away with desires, or taking things as they come, seeing death as something to not fear, etc.