Marcus Aurelius Quotes
Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.
Wait for death with a cheerful mind. For it is according to nature, and nothing is evil which is according to nature.
The only wealth which you will keep forever is the wealth you have given away.
We should not say 'I am an Athenian' or 'I am a Roman' but 'I am a citizen of the Universe'.
To understand the true quality of people, you must look into their minds, and examine their pursuits and aversions.
Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.
Marcus Aurelius
All is ephemeral. – fame and the famous as well.
You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.
Give thyself time to learn something new and good, and cease to be whirled around.
Our life is what our thoughts make it.
Be content with what you are, and wish not change; nor dread your last day, nor long for it.
Don't behave as if you are destined to live forever. What's fated hangs over you. As long as you live and while you can, become good now.
Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.
Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.
When thou art above measure angry, bethink thee how momentary is man's life.
Do every act of your life as if it were your last.
Remember this, - that there is a proper dignity and proportion to be observed in the performance of every act of life.
The secret of all victory lies in the organization of the non-obvious.
Death, like birth, is a secret of Nature.
This thou must always bear in mind, what is the nature of the whole, and what is my nature.
Poverty is the mother of crime.
Because a thing seems difficult for you, do not think it is impossible for anyone to accomplish.
Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.
Anything in any way beautiful derives its beauty from itself and asks nothing beyond itself. Praise is no part of it, for nothing is made worse or better by praise.
A man’s worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions.
Let men see, let them know, a real man, who lives as he was meant to live
The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.
Begin – to begin is half the work, let half still remain; again begin this, and though wilt have finished.
It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live
Let the part of thy soul which leads and governs be undisturbed by the movements in the flesh, whether of pleasure or of pain; and let it not unite with them, but let it circumscribe itself and limit those affects to their parts.
How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.
Where a man can live, he can also live well.
The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.
Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature's delight.
Marcus Aurelius
If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.
No form of nature is inferior to art; for the arts merely imitate natural forms.
Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else.
The act of dying is one of the acts of life.
Let each thing you would do, say or intend be like that of a dying person.
Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.
Remember that no man loses any other life than this which he now lives, nor lives any other than this which he now loses.
How quickly all things disappear, in the universe the bodies themselves, but in time the remembrance of them.
Since it is possible that thou mayest depart from life this very moment, regulate every act and thought accordingly.
Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.
Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.
Marcus Aurelius
We are too much accustomed to attribute to a single cause that which is the product of several, and the majority of our controversies come from that.
We ought to do good to others as simply as a horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after season without thinking of the grapes it has borne.
Death is a release from the impressions of the senses, and from desires that make us their puppets, and from the vagaries of the mind, and from the hard service of the flesh.
Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.
Through not observing what is in the mind of another a man has seldom been seen to be unhappy; but those who do not observe the movements of their own minds must of necessity be unhappy.
And, to say all in a word, everything which belongs to the body is a stream, and what belongs to the soul is a dream and vapour, and life is a warfare and a stranger's sojourn, and after-fame is oblivion.
Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also.
Your mind will be like its habitual thoughts; for the soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts. Soak it then in such trains of thoughts as, for example: Where life is possible at all, a right life is possible.
Men look for retreats for themselves, the country, the sea-shore, the hills; and you yourself, too, are peculiarly accustomed to feel the same want. Yet all this is very unlike a philosopher, when you may at any hour you please retreat into yourself. For nowhere does a man retreat into more quiet or privacy than into his own mind...
Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and one soul; and observe how all things have reference to one perception, the perception of this one living being; and how all things act with one movement; and how all things are the cooperating causes of all things which exist; observe too the continuous spinning of the thread and the contexture of the web.
But I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful, and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him who does wrong, that it is akin to me, not only of the same blood or seed, but that it participates in the same intelligence and the same portion of the divinity, I can neither be injured by any of them, for no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him, For we are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and to turn away.
What then is that which is able to conduct a man? One thing and only one, philosophy. But this consists in keeping the daemon within a man free from violence and unharmed, superior to pains and pleasures, doing nothing without purpose, nor yet falsely and with hypocrisy, not feeling the need of another man's doing or not doing anything; and besides, accepting all that happens, and all that is allotted, as coming from thence, wherever it is, from whence he himself came; and, finally, waiting for death with a cheerful mind, as being nothing else than a dissolution of the elements of which every living being is compounded. But if there is no harm to the elements themselves in each continually changing into another, why should a man have any apprehension about the change and dissolution of all the elements? For it is according to nature, and nothing is evil which is according to nature.
