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Marcus Aurelius Quotes
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God overrules all mutinous accidents, brings them under His laws of fate, and makes them all serviceable to His purpose.
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The art of life is more like the wrestler's art than the dancer's, in respect of this, that it should stand ready and firm to meet onsets which are sudden and unexpected.
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And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last.
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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.
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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].
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The world is nothing but change, our life is only perception.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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You should banish any thoughts of how you may appear to others.
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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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Let it judge that nothing is either bad or good which can happen equally to the bad man and the good. For that which happens equally to him who lives contrary to nature and to him who lives according to nature, is neither according to nature nor contrary to nature.
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Run down the list of those who felt intense anger at something: the most famous, the most unfortunate, the most hated, the most whatever: Where is all that now? Smoke, dust, legend...or not even a legend. Think of all the examples. And how trivial the things we want so passionately are.
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No one can keep you from living as your nature requires. Nothings can happen to you that is not required by Nature.
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Why should we feel anger at the world? As if the world would notice?
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Quote of the day
Now if the harvest is over, And the world cold, Give me the bonus of laughter, As I lose hold.
John Betjeman
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
mind
art
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soul
universe
power
change
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