Meditations

Discover Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations with this exquisite edition from Union Square & Co.’s Signature Gilded Editions series! The stunning Meditations special edition features sprayed edges, color end pages, a built-in ribbon bookmark, and embossed foil cover. The beautiful design and attention to detail set this special edition book apart, whether you’re reading for the first time or building a library of your favorite Stoic philosophy books.

Unhappy am I, because this has happened to me—Not so, but happy am I, though this has happened to me, because I continue free from pain, neither crushed by the present nor fearing the future. For such a thing as this might have happened to every man; but every man would not have continued free from pain on such an occasion. Why then is that rather a misfortune than this a good fortune?
—Book IV, 49

Meditations  and the nature of existence have since been compiled into one of the most influential works of ancient philosophy. It is a spiritual journal of the author's philosophical exercises and a chronicle of the paradox of the philosopher-king, who must enforce the law and administer justice while looking beyond politics to the cosmic vantage point from which the tribulations of politics come to seem trivial.