Marcus Aurelius - Life Quotes

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Remember that what pulls the strings is the force hidden within; there lies the power to persuade, there the life,—there, if one must speak out, the real man.

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

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

Marcus Aurelius
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.

Marcus Aurelius
Live not as though there were a thousand years ahead of you. Fate is at your elbow; make yourself good while life and power are still yours.

Marcus Aurelius
Know the joy of life by piling good deed on good deed until no rift or cranny appears between them.

Marcus Aurelius
The whole universe is change and life itself is but what you deem it

Marcus Aurelius
You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life? If you can manage this, that's all even the gods can ask of you.

Marcus Aurelius
Consider in what condition both in body and soul a man should be when he is overtaken by death; and consider the shortness of life, the boundless abyss of time past and future, the feebleness of all matter.

Marcus Aurelius
Consider when thou art much vexed or grieved, that man's life is only a moment, and after a short time we are all laid out dead.

Marcus Aurelius
Do not waste what remains of your life in speculating about your neighbors, unless with a view to some mutual benefit. To wonder what so-and-so is doing and why, or what he is saying, or thinking, or scheming — in a word, anything that distracts you from fidelity to the ruler within you — means a loss of opportunity for some other task.

Marcus Aurelius
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.

Marcus Aurelius
Your mind will be like its habitual thoughts; for the soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts. Soak it then in such trains of thoughts as, for example: Where life is possible at all, a right life is possible.

Marcus Aurelius
It is a shame for the soul to be first to give way in this life, when thy body does not give way.

Marcus Aurelius
Turn thy thoughts now to the consideration of thy life, thy life as a child, as a youth, thy manhood, thy old age, for in these also every change was a death. Is this anything to fear?

Marcus Aurelius
Do you see what little is required of a man to live a well-tempered and god-fearing life? Obey these precepts, and the gods will ask nothing more.

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
As thou thyself art a component part of a social system, so let every act of thine be a component part of social life. Whatever act of thine that has no reference, either immediately or remotely, to a social end, this tears asunder thy life, and does not allow it to be one, and it is of the nature of a mutiny, just as when in a popular assembly a man acting by himself stands apart from the general agreement.

Marcus Aurelius
You will find rest from vain fancies if you perform every act in life as though it were your last.

Marcus Aurelius
Remember that man lives only in the present, in this fleeting instant; all the rest of his life is either past and gone, or not yet revealed. Short, therefore, is man's life, and narrow is the corner of the earth wherein he dwells.

Marcus Aurelius
It is possible to depart from life at this moment. Have this thought in mind whenever you act, speak, or think.

Marcus Aurelius
Keep constantly in mind in how many things you yourself have witnessed changes already. The universe is change, life is understanding.

Marcus Aurelius
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
Though thou be destined to live three thousand years and as many myriads besides, yet remember that no man loseth other life than that which he liveth, nor liveth other than that which he loseth.

Marcus Aurelius