Marcus Aurelius Quotes

481 Sourced Quotes

Mark how fleeting and paltry is the estate of man - yesterday in embryo, tomorrow a mummy or ashes. So for the hairsbreadth of time assigned to thee, live rationally, and part with life cheerfully, as drops the ripe olive, extolling the season that bore it and the tree that matured it.

Marcus Aurelius
Enough of this wretched life and murmuring and apish tricks. Why art thou disturbed? What is there new in this? What unsettles thee? Is it the form of the thing? Look at it. Or is it the matter? Look at it. But besides these there is nothing. Towards the gods, then, now become at last more simple and better. It is the same whether we examine these things for a hundred years or three.

Marcus Aurelius
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.

Marcus Aurelius
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
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
The cucumber is bitter? Then throw it out. There are brambles in the path? Then go around. That's all you need to know.

Marcus Aurelius
Men despise one another and flatter one another; and men wish to raise themselves above one another, and crouch before one another.

Marcus Aurelius
Even while a thing is in the act of coming into existence, some part of it has already ceased to be.

Marcus Aurelius
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.

Marcus Aurelius
It doesn't hurt me unless I interpret its happening as harmful to me. I can choose not to.

Marcus Aurelius
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.

Marcus Aurelius
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.

Marcus Aurelius
Life is short. That's all there is to say. Get what you can from the present - thoughtfully, justly.

Marcus Aurelius
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?

Marcus Aurelius
You should banish any thoughts of how you may appear to others.

Marcus Aurelius
Your time has a limit set to it. Use it, then, to advance your enlightenment; or it will be gone, and never in your power again.

Marcus Aurelius
God overrules all mutinous accidents, brings them under His laws of fate, and makes them all serviceable to His purpose.

Marcus Aurelius
He who does not know what the world is, does not know where he is. And he who does not know for what purpose the world exists, does not know who he is, nor what the world is. But he who has failed in any one of these things could not even say for what purpose he exists himself. What then dost thou think of him who [avoids or] seeks the praise of those who applaud, of men who know not either where they are or who they are?

Marcus Aurelius
He that dies in extreme old age will be reduced to the same state with him that is cut down untimely.

Marcus Aurelius
Life is a warfare and a stranger's sojourn, and after fame is oblivion.

Marcus Aurelius
Remember how often you have postponed minding your interest, and let slip those opportunities the gods have given you. It is now high time to consider what sort of world you are part of, and from what kind of governor of it you are descended; that you have a set period assigned you to act in, and unless you improve it to brighten and compose your thoughts, it will quickly run off with you, and be lost beyond recovery.

Marcus Aurelius
It is man's peculiar duty to love even those who wrong him.

Marcus Aurelius
Direct thy attention to what is said. Let thy understanding enter into the things that are doing and the things which do them.

Marcus Aurelius
All those things at which thou wishest to arrive by a circuitous road, thou canst have now, if thou dost not refuse them to thyself.

Marcus Aurelius
Embellish the soul with simplicity, with prudence, and everything which is neither virtuous nor vicious. Love all men. Walk according to God; for, as a poet hath said, his laws govern all.

Marcus Aurelius
Within ten days thou wilt seem a god to those to whom thou art now a beast and an ape, if thou wilt return to thy principles and the worship of reason.

Marcus Aurelius
The world is nothing but change, our life is only perception.

Marcus Aurelius
For thus it is, men of Athens, in truth: wherever a man has placed himself thinking it is the best place for him, or has been placed by a commander, there in my opinion he ought to stay and to abide the hazard, taking nothing into the reckoning, either death or anything else, before the baseness [of deserting his post].

Marcus Aurelius
Let there be freedom from perturbations with respect to the things which come from the external cause; and let there be justice in the things done by virtue of the internal cause, that is, let there be movement and action terminating in this, in social acts, for this is according to thy nature.

Marcus Aurelius
And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last.

Marcus Aurelius