Top 100 Marcus Aurelius Quotes
#1. I do not regard a man as poor, if the little which remains is enough for him.
Marcus Aurelius
#2. He who fears death either fears to lose all sensation or fears new sensations. In reality, you will either feel nothing at all, and therefore nothing evil, or else, if you can feel any sensations, you will be a new creature, and so will not have ceased to have life.
Marcus Aurelius
#4. My only fear is doing something contrary to human nature - the wrong thing, the wrong way, or at the wrong time.
Marcus Aurelius
#5. To no man make yourself a boon companion: Your joy will be less but less will be your grief
Marcus Aurelius
#7. If any man should conceive certain things as being really good, such as prudence, temperance, justice, fortitude, he would not after having first conceived these endure to listen to anything which should not be in harmony with what is really good.
Marcus Aurelius
#8. The whole contains nothing which is not or its advantage; and all natures indeed have this common principle, but the nature of the universe has this principle besides, that it cannot be compelled even by any external cause to generate anything harmful to itself.
Marcus Aurelius
#9. It is man's peculiar duty to love even those who wrong him.
Marcus Aurelius
#11. Nothing happens to any man which he is not formed by nature to bear.
Marcus Aurelius
#12. 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.
Marcus Aurelius
#13. ( ... ) you have grown beyond supposing such actions to be either good or bad, and therefore it will be so much the easier to be tolerant of another's blindness.
Marcus Aurelius
#14. Everywhere and continually it is in your power to be reverently content with your present circumstance, to behave to men who are present with you according to right and to handle skillfully the present impression, that nothing you have not mastered may cross the threshold of the mind.
Marcus Aurelius
#15. From the philosopher Catulus, never to be dismissive of a friend's accusation, even if it seems unreasonable, but to make every effort to restore the relationship to its normal condition.
Marcus Aurelius
#16. To my great-grandfather I owed the advice to dispense with the education of the schools and have good masters at home instead - and to realize that no expense should be grudged for this purpose.
Marcus Aurelius
#18. Death and life, success and failure, pain and pleasure, wealth and poverty, all these happen to good and bad alike, and they are neither noble nor shameful - and hence neither good nor bad.
Marcus Aurelius
#20. The universe, then, is God, of whom the popular gods are manifestations; while legends and myths are allegorical. The soul of man is thus an emanation from the godhead, into whom it will eventually be re-absorbed.
Marcus Aurelius
#21. Yes, keep on degrading yourself, soul. But soon your chance at dignity will be gone. Everyone gets one life. Yours is almost used up, and instead of treating yourself with respect, you have entrusted your own happiness to the souls of others.
Marcus Aurelius
#22. Think of what you have rather than of what you lack. Of the things you have, select the best and then reflect how eagerly you would have sought them if you did not have them.
Marcus Aurelius
#23. Do nothing against thy will, nor contrary to the community, nor without due examination, nor with reluctancy.
Marcus Aurelius
#25. Waste not the remnant of thy life in those imaginations touching other folk, whereby thou contributest not to the common weal.
Marcus Aurelius
#26. Let the god that is within you be the champion of the being you are.
Marcus Aurelius
#27. To undertake nothing: i. at random or without a purpose; ii. for any reason but the common good.
Marcus Aurelius
#28. The earth loveth the shower," and "the holy aether knoweth what love is." The Universe, too, loves to create whatsoever is destined to be made.
Marcus Aurelius
#29. People out for posthumous fame forget that the Generations To Come will be the same annoying people they know now.
Marcus Aurelius
#32. Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to throw away. Death stands at your elbow. Be good for something while you live and it is in your power.
Marcus Aurelius
#33. Pneuma is the power - the vital breath - that animates animals and humans. It is, in Dylan Thomas's phrase, "the force that through the green fuse drives the flower," and is present even in lifeless materials like stone or metal as the energy that holds the object together - the
Marcus Aurelius
#34. It is no evil for things to undergo change, and no good for things to subsist in consequence of change. 43.
Marcus Aurelius
#35. Today I escaped from anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions - not outside.
Marcus Aurelius
#37. Choose not to be harmed - and you won't feel harmed. Don't feel harmed - and you haven't been.
Marcus Aurelius
#38. None of us have much time. And yet you act as if things were eternal - the way you fear and long for them. ... Before long, darkness. And whoever buries you mourned in their turn.
Marcus Aurelius
#39. Because a thing seems difficult for you, do not think it impossible for anyone to accomplish.
Marcus Aurelius
#40. God overrules all mutinous accidents, brings them under His laws of fate, and makes them all serviceable to His purpose.
Marcus Aurelius
#41. Everything - a horse, a vine - is created for some duty ... For what task, then, were you yourself created?
Marcus Aurelius
#42. Can anything that is useful be accomplished without change?
Marcus Aurelius
#43. If you are distressed about anything, the pain is not one to the thing but to your own estimate to it.
Marcus Aurelius
#44. When the longest- and shortest-lived of us dies their loss is precisely equal. For the sole thing of which any of us can be deprived is the present, since this is all we own, and nobody can lose what is not theirs.
Marcus Aurelius
#45. This thou must always bear in mind, what is the nature of the whole ...
Marcus Aurelius
#46. Every being ought to do that which is according to its constitution; and all other things have been constituted for the sake of the superior, but the rational for the sake of one another.
Marcus Aurelius
#47. Remind oneself continually of one of those who practiced virtue in days gone by.
Marcus Aurelius
#48. Does the light of the lamp shine without losing its splendour until it is extinguished; and shall the truth which is in thee and justice and temperance be extinguished before thy death?
Marcus Aurelius
#50. No state sorrier than that of the man who keeps up a continual round, and pries into "the secrets of the nether world," as saith the poet, and is curious in conjecture of what is in his
neighbour's heart.
Marcus Aurelius
#51. Things can never touch the soul, but stand inert outside it, so that disquiet can arise only from fancies within.
Marcus Aurelius
#52. We must press on then, in haste; not simply because every hour brings us nearer to death, but because even before then our powers of perception and comprehension begin to deteriorate.
Marcus Aurelius
#53. God give me patience, to reconcile with what I am not able to change
Give me strength to change what I can
And give me wisdom to distinguish one from another.
Marcus Aurelius
#55. Stop drifting. You're not going to re-read your Brief Comments, your Deeds of the Ancient Greeks and Romans, the commonplace books you saved for your old age. Sprint for the finish. Write off your hopes, and if your well-being matters to you, be your own savior while you can.
Marcus Aurelius
#56. The existence of evil does not harm the world. And an individual act of evil does not harm the victim. Only one person is harmed by it - and he can stop being harmed as soon as he decides to.
Marcus Aurelius
#57. Finally, therefore, remember your retreat into this little domain which is yourself, and above all be not disturbed nor on the rack, but be free and look at things as a man, a human being, a citizen, a creature that must die.
Marcus Aurelius
#59. 73. When you have done a good act and another has received it, why do you look for a third thing besides these, as fools do, either to have the reputation of having done a good act or to obtain a return?
Marcus Aurelius
#60. Your task is to stand straight; not to be held straight.
Marcus Aurelius
#61. The man of ambition thinks to find his good in the operations of others; the man of pleasure in his own sensations; but the man of understanding in his own actions.
Marcus Aurelius
#63. Remember that man lives only in the present, in this fleeting instant; all the rest of his life is either past and gone, or not yet revealed.
Marcus Aurelius
#65. Objective judgment ... Unselfish action ... Willing acceptance ... of all external events.
Marcus Aurelius
#66. The wrongdoer is often the person who left something undone, rather than the person who has done something
Marcus Aurelius
#67. Constantly contemplate the whole of time and the whole of substance, and consider that all individual things as to substance are a grain of a fig, and as to time the turning of a gimlet .
Marcus Aurelius
#68. The true joy of humankind is in doing that which is most proper to our nature; and the first property of people is to be kindly affected towards them that are of one kind with ourselves.
Marcus Aurelius
#70. Death hangs over thee, While thou still live, while thou may, do good.
Marcus Aurelius
#71. Be not as one that hath ten thousand years to live; death is nigh at hand: while thou livest, while thou hast time, be good.
Marcus Aurelius
#72. In the mind that is once truly disciplined and purged, thou canst not find anything, either foul or impure, or as it were festered: nothing that is either servile, or affected: no partial tie; no malicious averseness; nothing obnoxious; nothing concealed.
Marcus Aurelius
#73. Practice even what seems impossible. The left hand is useless at almost everything, for lack of practice. But it guides the reins better than the right. From practice. 7.
Marcus Aurelius
#74. Though thou be destined to live three thousand years and as many myriads besides, yet remember that no man loseth other life than that which he liveth, nor liveth other than that which he
loseth.
Marcus Aurelius
#75. Body. Soul. Mind. Sensations: the body. Desires: the soul. Reasoning: the mind.
Marcus Aurelius
#76. Humans have come into being for the sake of each other, so either teach them, or learn to bear them.
Marcus Aurelius
#78. The true worth of a man is to be measured by the objects he pursues.
Marcus Aurelius
#79. Look at the past - empire succeeding empire - and from that, extrapolate the future: the same thing. No escape from the rhythm of events. Which is why observing life for forty years is as good as a thousand. Would you really see anything new?
Marcus Aurelius
#80. 19. Everything is here for a purpose, from horses to vine shoots. What's surprising about that? Even the sun will tell you, "I have a purpose," and the other gods as well. And why were you born? For pleasure? See if that answer will stand up to questioning.
Marcus Aurelius
#82. Death. The end of sense-perception, of being controlled by our emotions, of mental activity, of enslavement to our bodies.
Marcus Aurelius
#84. There is nothing happens to any person but what was in his power to go through with.
Marcus Aurelius
#86. For then thou wilt neither blame those who offend involuntarily, nor wilt thou want their approbation, if thou lookest to the sources of their opinions and appetites.
Marcus Aurelius
#87. When the object perishes, the pneuma that animated it is reabsorbed into the logos as a whole. This process of destruction and reintegration happens to individual objects at every moment.
Marcus Aurelius
#88. Let your one delight and refreshment be to pass from one service to the community to another, with God ever in mind.
Marcus Aurelius
#89. What is this, fundamentally? What is its nature and substance, its reason for being? What is it doing in the world? How long is it here for?
Marcus Aurelius
#90. No one was ever injured by the truth; but he who persists in self-deception and ignorance is injured.
Marcus Aurelius
#91. The universal order and the personal order are nothing but different expressions and manifestations of a common underlying principle.
Marcus Aurelius
#92. Begin - to begin is half the work, let half still remain; again begin this, and thou wilt have finished.
Marcus Aurelius
#93. Indeed, the application of the adjective "stoic" to a person who shows strength and courage in misfortune probably owes more to the aristocratic Roman value system than it does to Greek philosophers. Stoicism
Marcus Aurelius
#94. Remember that there is a God who desires neither praise nor glory from men created in his image, but rather that they, guided by the understanding given them, should in their actions become like unto him.
Marcus Aurelius
#95. X. Labour not as one to whom it is appointed to be wretched, nor as one that either would be pitied, or admired; but let this be thine only care and desire; so always and in all things to prosecute or to forbear, as the law of charity, or mutual society doth require.
Marcus Aurelius
#96. Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.
Marcus Aurelius
#97. Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest been lived already, or is impossible to see. The span we live is small - small as the corner of the earth in which we live it.
Marcus Aurelius
#98. Thy present opinion founded on understanding, and thy present conduct directed to social good, and thy present disposition of contentment with everything which happens- that is enough. Wipe out imagination: check desire: extinguish appetite: keep the ruling faculty in its own power. Among
Marcus Aurelius
#99. To the gods I am indebted for having good grandfathers, good parents, a good sister, good teachers, good associates, good kinsmen and friends, nearly everything good.
Marcus Aurelius
#100. The sole thing of which any man can be deprived is the present; since this is all he owns, and nobody can lose what is not his.
Marcus Aurelius
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