Quotes About Death Marcus Aurelius

#1. There is such a torture, happily unknown to ancient tyranny, as talking a man to death. Marcus Aurelius advises to assent readily to great talkers
in hopes, I suppose, to put an end to the argument.

Laurence Sterne

#2. It were well to die if there be gods, and sad to live if there be none.

Marcus Aurelius

#3. In death, Alexander of Macedon's end differed no whit from his stable-boy's. Either both were received into the same generative principle of the universe, or both alike were dispersed into atoms.

Marcus Aurelius

#4. Death smiles at us all; all we can do is smile back.

Marcus Aurelius

#5. 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

#6. Turn thy thoughts now to the consideration of thy life, thy life as a child, as a youth, thy manhood, thy old age, for in these also every change was a death. Is this anything to fear?

Marcus Aurelius

#7. Marcus Aurelius, AD 121-180, author of Meditations. Quoth said emperor: It is not death a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live. And also: You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realise this, and you will find strength.

Claire North

#8. It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.

Marcus Aurelius

#9. Death hangs over thee, While thou still live, while thou may, do good.

Marcus Aurelius

#10. 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

#11. Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.

Marcus Aurelius

#12. 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.

Marcus Aurelius

#13. Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretence.

Marcus Aurelius

#14. We must make haste then, not only because we are daily nearer to death, but also because the conception of things and the understanding of them cease first.

Marcus Aurelius

#15. Alexander the Macedonian and his groom by death were brought to the same state; for either they were received among the same seminal principles of the universe, or they were alike dispersed among the atoms. Consider

Marcus Aurelius

#16. That which has died falls not out of the universe. If it stays here, it also changes here, and is dissolved into its proper parts, which are elements of the universe and of thyself. And these too change, and they murmur not.

Marcus Aurelius

#17. Death. The end of sense-perception, of being controlled by our emotions, of mental activity, of enslavement to our bodies.

Marcus Aurelius

#18. Death hangs over thee. While thou livest, while it is in thy power, be good.

Marcus Aurelius

#19. He who dreads death, dreads either an extinction of all sense, or dreads a different sort of sensation. If all sense is extinguished, there can be no sense of evil. If a different sort of sense is acquired, you become another sort of living creature; and don't cease to live.

Marcus Aurelius

#20. Death is a cessation of the impressions through the senses, and of the pulling of the strings that move the appetites, and of the discursive movements of the thoughts, and of the service to the flesh.

Marcus Aurelius

#21. Meditate upon what you ought to be in body and soul when death overtakes you; meditate on the brevity of life, and the measureless gulf of eternity behind it and before, and upon the frailty of everything material.

Marcus Aurelius

#22. I had always thought, for 'Roman Empire,' I would love to do the death of Marcus Aurelius in the snow. One morning I woke up, and it was really snowing.

Anthony Mann

#23. Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else.

Marcus Aurelius

#24. From Plato: the man who has an elevated mind and takes a view of all time and of all substance, dost thou suppose it possible for him to think that human life is anything great? It is not possible, he said. Such a man then will think that death also is no evil.

Marcus Aurelius

#25. If there were anything harmful on the other side of death, they would have made sure that the ability to avoid it was within you.

Marcus Aurelius

#26. If you separate from ... everything you have done in the past, everything that disturbs you about the future ... and apply yourself to living the life that you are living-that is to say, the present-you can live all the time that remains to you until your death in calm, benevolence, and serenity.

Marcus Aurelius

#27. Consider in what condition both in body and soul a man should be when he is overtaken by death; and consider the shortness of life, the boundless abyss of time past and future, the feebleness of all matter.

Marcus Aurelius

#28. Swiftly the remembrance of all things is buried in the gulf of eternity.

Marcus Aurelius

#29. 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

#30. All that comes to pass is as familiar and well known as the rose in spring, and the grape in summer. Of like fashion are sickness, death, calumny, intrigue, and all that gladdens or saddens the foolish.

Marcus Aurelius

#31. Not to live as if you had endless years ahead of you. Death overshadows you. While you're alive and able - be good. 18.

Marcus Aurelius

#32. With respect to pain, then, and pleasure, or death and life, or honour and dishonour, which the universal nature employs equally, whoever is not equally affected is manifestly acting impiously.

Marcus Aurelius

#33. Severally on the occasion of everything that thou doest, pause and ask thyself, if death is a dreadful thing because it deprives thee of this.

Marcus Aurelius

#34. In everything that you do, pause and ask yourself if death is a dreadful thing because it deprives you of this

Marcus Aurelius

#35. 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

#36. Death
a stopping of impressions through the senses, and of the pulling of the cords of motion, and of the ways of thought, and of service to the flesh.

Marcus Aurelius

#37. As for life therefore, and death, honour and dishonour, labour and pleasure, riches and poverty, all these things happen unto men indeed, both good and bad, equally; but as things which of themselves are neither good nor bad; because of themselves, neither shameful nor praiseworthy.

Marcus Aurelius

#38. what death is, and the fact that, if a man looks at it in itself, and by the abstractive power of reflection resolves into their parts all the things which present themselves to the imagination in it, he will then consider it to be nothing else than an operation of nature;

Marcus Aurelius

#39. 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

#40. There is no man so blessed that some who stand by his deathbed won't hail the occasion with delight.

Marcus Aurelius

#41. 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

#42. Sexual ecstasy is like death. It is one of the secrets of nature's wisdom.

Marcus Aurelius

#43. Think not disdainfully of death, but look on it with favor; for even death is one of the things that Nature wills.

Marcus Aurelius

#44. The constant recollection of death is the test of human conduct.

Marcus Aurelius

#45. He who fears death either fears the loss of sensation or a different kind of sensation. But if thou shalt have no sensation, neither wilt thou feel any harm; and if thou shalt acquire another kind of sensation, thou wilt be a different kind of living being and thou wilt not cease to live.

Marcus Aurelius

#46. Death is a cessation from the impression of the senses, the tyranny of the passions, the errors of the mind, and the servitude of the body.

Marcus Aurelius

#47. Death, like birth, is one of nature's mysteries, the combining of primal elements and dissolving of the same into the same.

Marcus Aurelius

#48. Stop whatever you're doing for a moment and ask yourself: Am I afraid of death because I won't be able to do this anymore?

Marcus Aurelius

#49. Everything of the body is a river. Everything of the soul is dream and vapour. Life is war and the abode of a stranger. The only fame after death is oblivion.

Marcus Aurelius

#50. 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