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Marcus Aurelius Quotes
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You should banish any thoughts of how you may appear to others.
Marcus Aurelius
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Pray look upon the plants and birds, the ants, spiders, and bees, and you will see them all exerting their nature, and busy in their station. Pray, shall not a man act like a man?
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Life is short. That's all there is to say. Get what you can from the present - thoughtfully, justly.
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Does what's happened keep you from acting with justice, generosity, self-control, sanity, prudence, honesty, humility, straightforward ness, and all other qualities that allow a person's nature to fulfill itself? So remember this principle when something threatens to cause you pain: the thing itself was no misfortune at all; to endure it and prevail is great good fortune.
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In the end, what would you gain from everlasting remembrance? Absolutely nothing. So what is left worth living for? This alone: justice in thought, goodness in action, speech that cannot deceive, and a disposition glad of whatever comes, welcoming it as necessary, as familiar, as flowing from the same source and fountain as yourself.
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It doesn't hurt me unless I interpret its happening as harmful to me. I can choose not to.
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When you have trouble getting out of bed in the morning, remember that your defining characteristic-what defines a human being-is to work with others.
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Even while a thing is in the act of coming into existence, some part of it has already ceased to be.
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Men despise one another and flatter one another; and men wish to raise themselves above one another, and crouch before one another.
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The cucumber is bitter? Then throw it out. There are brambles in the path? Then go around. That's all you need to know.
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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.
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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.
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Remember that all is opinion. For what was said by the Cynic Monimus is manifest: and manifest too is the use of what was said, if a man receives what may be got out of it as far as it is true.
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Always run to the short way; and the short way is the natural: accordingly say and do everything in conformity with the soundest reason. For such a purpose frees a man from trouble, and warfare, and all artifice and ostentatious display.
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If this is neither my own badness, nor an effect of my own badness, and the common weal is not injured, why am I troubled about it? And what is the harm to the common weal?
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Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it.
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It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinions than our own.
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The stone that is thrown into the air is none the worse for falling down, and none the better for going up.
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Keep in mind how fast things pass by and are gone - those that are now, and those to come. Existence flows past us like a river; the "what" is in constant flux, the "why" has a thousand variations. Nothing is stable, not even what's right here. The infinity of past and future gapes before us - a chasm whose depths we cannot see.
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Our inward power, when it obeys nature, reacts to events by accommodating itself to what it faces - to what is possible. It needs no specific material. It pursues its own aims as circumstances allow; it turns obstacles into fuel. As a fire overwhelms what would have quenched a lamp. What's thrown on top of the conflagration is absorbed, consumed by it - and makes it burn still higher.
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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?
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Suppose that men kill thee, cut thee in pieces, curse thee, what can these things do to prevent thy mind from remaining pure, wise, sober, just?
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This is the mark of a perfect character - to pass through each day as though it were the last, without agitation, without torpor, and without pretense.
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Neither in thy actions be sluggish nor in thy conversation without method, nor wandering in thy thoughts, nor let there be in thy soul inward contention nor external effusion, nor in life be so busy as to have no leisure.
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Even the stoics agree that certainty is very hard to come at; that our assent is worth little, for where is infallibility to be found?
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Quote of the day
Autumn burned brightly, a running flame through the mountains, a torch flung to the trees.
Faith Baldwin
Marcus Aurelius
Creative Commons
Born:
April 26, 121
Died:
March 17, 180
(aged 58)
Bio:
Marcus Aurelius was Roman Emperor from 161 to 180. He ruled with Lucius Verus as co-emperor from 161 until Verus' death in 169. Marcus Aurelius was the last of the so-called Five Good Emperors.
Known for:
Meditations (180 AD)
Most used words:
man
life
nature
time
thyself
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art
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universe
power
change
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