Top 100 Quotes About Marcus Aurelius
#1. It is a bitter thought, how different a thing the Christianity of the world might have been, if the Christian faith had been adopted as the religion of the empire under the auspices of Marcus Aurelius instead of those of Constantine.
John Stuart Mill
#2. 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.
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
#3. Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (one of the doer-Stoic authors), "fire feeds on obstacles.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
#4. 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
#5. From Rusticus . . . I learned to read carefully and not be satisfied with a rough understanding of the whole, and not to agree too quickly with those who have a lot to say about something." - MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 1.7.3
Ryan Holiday
#6. Remember this, that very little is needed to make a happy life.' Marcus Aurelius said that.
Brittainy C. Cherry
#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. When you're a confused 19-year-old filled with questions you can't even articulate and a kind of black rage that feeds at your heart from the moment you wake up in the morning, and you discover Marcus Aurelius' 'The Meditations,' that changes your life.
Nic Pizzolatto
#9. All you need are these: certainty of judgment in the present moment; action for the common good in the present moment; and an attitude of gratitude in the present moment for anything that comes your way." - MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 9.6
Ryan Holiday
#10. It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character. - MARCUS AURELIUS
Ryan Holiday
#11. Just when the gods had ceased to be, and the Christ had not yet come, there was a unique moment in history, between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, when man stood alone.
Gustave Flaubert
#12. Adapt yourself to the things among which your lot has been cast and love sincerely the fellow creatures with whom destiny has ordained that you shall live.' Marcus Aurelius
Wendy Holden
#13. Don't let your reflection on the whole sweep of life crush you. Don't fill your mind with all the bad things that might still happen. Stay focused on the present situation and ask yourself why it's so unbearable and can't be survived." - MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 8.36
Ryan Holiday
#14. It's an old principle, as old as the Buddha or Marcus Aurelius: We need at times to step away from our lives in order to put them in perspective. Especially if we wish to be productive.
Pico Iyer
#15. listen to Marcus Aurelius's empowering call to "get active in your own rescue - if you care for yourself at all - and do it while you can.
Ryan Holiday
#17. Marcus Aurelius appoints personal character and conscience the ultimate refuge of happiness-seekers: the only place where dreams of happiness, doomed to die childless and intestate anywhere else, are not bound to be frustrated.
Zygmunt Bauman
#18. A man's thoughts dye his soul, attributed to Marcus Aurelius
Elisabeth Elliot
#19. A man's duty is like his shadow. He may cast his eyes away from it, yet it follows him even as he flees it - Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
T.M. Bown
#20. I have to create a circle of reading for myself: Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Lao-Tzu, Buddha, Pascal, The New Testament. This is also necessary for all people.
Leo Tolstoy
#21. Organisms need, to use the metaphor of Marcus Aurelius, to turn obstacles into fuel - just as fire does.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
#22. Don't condemn yourself or lose heart when you sometimes fail to measure up to your own principles; instead, get back up, embrace the imperfection of your own humanity, and go back with confidence and energy to your pursuit. - MARCUS AURELIUS
Sheldon Whitehouse
#23. In the second century A.D. the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius may have best defined pantheism when he wrote, Everything is interwoven, and the web is holy.
Sharman Apt Russell
#24. The Way Through Them Objective judgment, now at this very moment. Unselfish action, now at this very moment. Willing acceptance - now at this very moment - of all external events. That's all you need. - MARCUS AURELIUS
Ryan Holiday
#25. We should always try to find those things which do not separate us from other people but which unite us. To work against each other, to be angry and turn your back on each other, is to work against nature. - MARCUS AURELIUS
Leo Tolstoy
#27. 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
#28. My Mt. Rushmore of hero worship would include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Marcus Aurelius, Frank Sinatra and Barry White.
Karen Duffy
#29. Every moment think steadily as a Roman and a man, to do what thou hast in hand with perfect and simple dignity, and a feeling of affection and freedom and justice. These words of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus strike me as pretty good advice, for even the orneriest young scamp.
Walker Percy
#30. There must be a technique for meeting pain. There must be a technique of endurance based on the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity, as Marcus Aurelius taught long ago.
Ray Stannard Baker
#31. If any man is able to convince me and show me that I do not think or act right, I will gladly change; for I seek the truth by which no man was ever injured. But he is injured who abides in his error and ignorance.
Marcus Aurelius
#32. The only wealth which you will keep forever is the wealth you have given away.
Marcus Aurelius
#33. Search men's governing principles, and consider the wise, what they shun and what they cleave to.
Marcus Aurelius
#34. There is but one thing of real value - to cultivate truth and justice, and to live without anger in the midst of lying and unjust men.
Marcus Aurelius
#35. It's the truth I'm after, and the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance.
Marcus Aurelius
#36. Your mind will be like its habitual thoughts; for the soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.
Marcus Aurelius
#37. 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.
Marcus Aurelius
#38. Thereby gain much leisure, and save much trouble, and therefore at every action a man must privately by way of admonition suggest unto himself, What? may not this that now I go about,
Marcus Aurelius
#39. All things are the same, familiar in enterprise, momentary in endurance, coarse in substance. All things now are as they were in the day of those whom we have buried.
Marcus Aurelius
#40. Whatever happens at all happens as it should; you will find this true, if you watch narrowly.
Marcus Aurelius
#41. How ridiculous and unrealistic is the man who is astonished at anything that happens in life.
Marcus Aurelius
#42. He who has seen the present has seen everything, that which happened in the most distant past and that which will happen in the future.
Marcus Aurelius
#43. It is not right to vex ourselves at things, for they care not about it.
Marcus Aurelius
#44. Failing to understand the workings of one's own mind is bound to lead to unhappiness.
Marcus Aurelius
#45. Swiftly the remembrance of all things is buried in the gulf of eternity.
Marcus Aurelius
#46. Everything is banal in experience, fleeting in duration, sordid in content; in all respects the same today as generations now dead and buried have found it to be.
Marcus Aurelius
#47. Human society is a single organism, like an individual human body or a tree. But
Marcus Aurelius
#48. You've given aid and they've received it. And yet, like an idiot, you keep holding out for more: to be credited with a Good Deed, to be repaid in kind. Why?
Marcus Aurelius
#49. Our anger and annoyance are more detrimental to us than the things themselves which anger or annoy us.
Marcus Aurelius
#50. Whatever may happen to you, it was prepared for you from all eternity; and the implication of causes was from eternity spinning the thread of your being, and of that which is incident to it.
Marcus Aurelius
#51. No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be good.
Marcus Aurelius
#52. Ifit be a thing external that causes thy grief, know, that it is not that properly that doth cause it, but thine own conceit and opinion concerning the thing: which thou mayest rid
thyself of, when thou wilt.
Marcus Aurelius
#53. How very near us stand the two vast gulfs of time, the past and the future, in which all things disappear.
Marcus Aurelius
#54. Remember that very little is needed to make a happy life.
Marcus Aurelius
#55. I do not regard a man as poor, if the little which remains is enough for him.
Marcus Aurelius
#56. How much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks.
Marcus Aurelius
#57. Do what nature now requires. Set thyself in motion, if it is in thy power, and do not look about thee to see if any one will observe it; nor yet expect Plato's Republic: but be content if the smallest thing goes on well, and consider such an event to be no small matter.
Marcus Aurelius
#58. Of all existing things some are in our power, and others are not in our power.
Marcus Aurelius
#60. Beautiful things of any kind are beautiful in themselves and sufficient to themselves. Praise is extraneous. The object of praise remains what it was - no better and no worse.
Marcus Aurelius
#61. Don't go on discussing what a good person should be. Just be one.
Marcus Aurelius
#62. As far as you can, get into the habit of asking yourself in relation to any action taken by another: "What is his point of reference here?" But begin with yourself: examine yourself first.
Marcus Aurelius
#63. 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
#64. In the life of a man, his time is but a moment, his being an incessant flux, his sense a dim rushlight, his body a prey of worms, his soul an unquiet eddy, his fortune dark, his fame doubtful. In short, all that is body is as coursing waters, all that is of the soul as dreams and vapors.
Marcus Aurelius
#65. There is a kind of river of things passing into being and Time is a violent torrent. For no sooner is each seen, than it has been carried away, and another is being carried by, and that, too, will be carried away.
Marcus Aurelius
#66. A better wrestler. But not a better citizen, a better person, a better resource in tight places, a better forgiver of faults.
Marcus Aurelius
#67. You are a spirit, bearing the weight of a dead body, as Epictetus used to say.
Marcus Aurelius
#68. Be not unwilling in what thou doest, neither selfish nor unadvised nor obstinate; let not over-refinement deck out thy thought; be not wordy nor a busybody.
Marcus Aurelius
#70. The honest and good man ought to be exactly like a man who smells strong, so that the bystander as soon as he comes near him must smell whether he choose or not.
Marcus Aurelius
#71. He who has seen present things has seen all, both everything which has taken place from all eternity and everything which will be for time without end; for all things are of one kin and of one form.
Marcus Aurelius
#72. In the case of most pains let this remark of Epicurus aid thee, that the pain is neither intolerable nor everlasting, if thou bear in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination ...
Marcus Aurelius
#73. Spend your brief moment according to nature's law, and serenely greet the journey's end as an olive falls when it is ripe, blessing the branch that bare it, and giving thanks to the tree that gave it life.
Marcus Aurelius
#74. The blazing fire makes flames and brightness out of everything thrown into it.
Marcus Aurelius
#75. What else did you expect from helping someone out? Isn't it enough that you've done what your nature demands? You want a salary for it too? As if your eyes expected a reward for seeing, or your feet for walking. That's what they were made for.
Marcus Aurelius
#77. Every man is worth just so much as the things about which he busies himself.
Marcus Aurelius
#78. How ridiculous and how strange to be surprised at anything which happens in life
Marcus Aurelius
#79. All things of the body stream away like a river, all things of the mind are dreams and delusion; life is warfare, and a visit to a strange land; the only lasting fame is oblivion.
Marcus Aurelius
#80. It's normal to feel pain in your hands and feet, if you're using your feet as feet and your hands as hands. And for a human being to feel stress is normal - if he's living a normal life. And if it's normal, how can it be bad?
Marcus Aurelius
#81. Consider how quickly all things are dissolved and resolved:
Marcus Aurelius
#82. To how much envy and fraud and hypocrisy the state of a tyrannous king is subject unto, and how they who are commonly called [Eupatridas Gk.], i.e. nobly born, are in some sort incapable, or void of natural affection.
Marcus Aurelius
#83. Live your life as if you are ready to say goodbye to it at any moment, as if the time left for you were some pleasant surprise.
Marcus Aurelius
#84. Whatever happens to you has been waiting to happen since the beginning of time. The twining strands of fate wove both of them together: your own existence and the things that happen to you
Marcus Aurelius
#85. You should always look on human life as short and cheap. Yesterday sperm: tomorrow a mummy or ashes.
Marcus Aurelius
#86. To pursue the impossible is madness: but it is impossible for evil men not to do things of this sort.
Marcus Aurelius
#87. In one way an arrow moves, in another way the mind. The mind indeed, both when it exercises caution and when it is employed about inquiry, moves straight onward not the less, and to its object.
Marcus Aurelius
#88. Put an end once and for all to this discussion of what a good person should be, and be one.
Marcus Aurelius
#89. The controlling Intelligence understands its own nature, and what it does, and whereon it works.
Marcus Aurelius
#90. I do my duty: other things trouble me not; for they are either things without life, or things without reason, or things that have rambled and know not the way.
Marcus Aurelius
#91. You must become an old man in good time if you wish to be an old man long.
Marcus Aurelius
#92. 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.
Marcus Aurelius
#93. 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
#94. My only fear is doing something contrary to human nature - the wrong thing, the wrong way, or at the wrong time.
Marcus Aurelius
#95. To live each day as though one's last, never flustered, never apathetic, never attitudinizing - here is the perfection of character.
Marcus Aurelius
#96. Every man's life lies within the present; for the past is spent and done with, and the future is uncertain.
Marcus Aurelius
#97. A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.
Marcus Aurelius
#98. Snow endures but for a season, and joy comes with the morning.
Marcus Aurelius
#99. And to behave in a conciliatory way when people who have angered or annoyed us want to make up.
Marcus Aurelius
#100. To no man make yourself a boon companion: Your joy will be less but less will be your grief
Marcus Aurelius
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
