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Marcus Aurelius Quotes
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Doctors keep their scalpels and other instruments handy, for emergencies. Keep your philosophy ready too - ready to understand heaven and earth. In everything you do, even the smallest thing, remember the chain that links them. Nothing earthly succeeds by ignoring heaven, nothing heavenly by ignoring earth.
Marcus Aurelius
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Be mindful at all times of the following: the nature of the whole universe, the nature of the part that is me, the relation of the one to the other, the one so vast, the other so small.
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They know not how many things are signified by the words stealing, sowing, buying, keeping quiet, seeing what ought to be done; for this is not effected by the eyes, but by another kind of vision.
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Reason and the reasoning faculty need no foreign assistance, but are sufficient for their own purposes. They move within themselves, and make directly for the point in view. Wherefore, acts in accordance with them are called right acts, for they lead along the right road.
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It's silly to try to escape other people's faults. They are inescapable. Just try to escape your own.
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Stop talking about what the good man is like, and just be one.
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Get rid of the judgement... get rid of the 'I am hurt,' you are rid of the hurt itself.
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The offender needs pity, not wrath; those who must needs be corrected, should be treated with tact and gentleness; and one must be always ready to learn better. 'The best kind of revenge is, not to become like unto them.'
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Take away your opinion, and then there is taken away the complaint, 'I have been harmed.' Take away the complaint, 'I have been harmed,' and the harm is taken away.
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Failing to understand the workings of one's own mind is bound to lead to unhappiness.
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Your manners will depend very much upon the quality of what you frequently think on; for the soul is as it were tinged with the colour and complexion of thought.
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The gods gave me a father who ruled over me and rid me of any trace of arrogance and showed me that one can live in a palace without bodyguards, extravagant attire, chandeliers, statues, and other luxuries. He taught me that it is possible to live instead pretty much in the manner of a private citizen without losing any of the dignity and authority a ruler must possess to discharge his imperial duties effectively.
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Treat with utmost respect your power of forming opinions, for this power alone guards you against making assumptions that are contrary to nature and judgments that overthrow the rule of reason.
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How many after being celebrated by fame have been given up to oblivion; and how many who have celebrated the fame of others have long been dead.
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Thanks to the gods I didn't spend much time while growing up with my grandfather's mistress and preserved the flower of my youth, waiting for the proper time to demonstrate my virility.
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Practice really hearing what people say. Do your best to get inside their mind.
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If you are pained by any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it. It is in your power to erase this judgment about it. If anything in your own nature gives you pain, you are who hinders you from correcting your opinion.
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Look deep into the hearts of men, and see what delights and disgusts the wise.
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It's time you realized that you have something in you more powerful and miraculous than the things that affect you and make you dance like a puppet.
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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.
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Remember: Matter: how tiny your share of it. Time: how brief and fleeting your allotment of it. Fate: how small a role you play in it.
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Take the shortest route. The one that nature planned - to speak and act in the healthiest way. Do that, and be free of pain and stress, free of all calculations and pretension.
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Think of the country mouse and of the town mouse, and of the alarm and trepidation of the town mouse.
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When you find an unwillingness to rise early in the morning, make this short speech to yourself: I am getting up now to do the business of a man; and am I out of humour for going about that I was made for, and for the sake of which I was sent into the world? Was I then designed for nothing but to doze and keep warm beneath the counterpane? Well! but this is a comfortable way of living.
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If it's in your control, why do you do it? If it's in someone else's control, then who are you blaming? Atoms? The gods? Stupid either way. Blame no one. Set people straight, if you can. If not, just repair the damage.
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Quote of the day
That liberty is a great thing we may know from our own feelings, and we may likewise judge so from the conduct of the white-people, in the late war.
Jupiter Hammon
Marcus Aurelius
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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:
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