Marcus Aurelius - Meditations (180 AD)

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

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

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

Marcus Aurelius
Things can never touch the soul, but stand inert outside it, so that disquiet can arise only from fancies within.

Marcus Aurelius
Do not expect Plato's ideal republic; be satisfied with even the smallest step forward, and consider this no small achievement.

Marcus Aurelius
Find joy in simplicity, self-respect, and indifference to what lies between virtue and vice. Love the human race. Follow the divine.

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
Why should we feel anger at the world? As if the world would notice?

Marcus Aurelius
No one can keep you from living as your nature requires. Nothings can happen to you that is not required by Nature.

Marcus Aurelius
Men are born for each other's sake, so either teach people or endure them

Marcus Aurelius
Keep yourself simple, good, pure, serious, and unassuming; the friend of justice and godliness; kindly, affectionate, and resolute in your devotion to duty.

Marcus Aurelius
Keep reminding yourself of the way things are connected, of great relatedness. All things are implicated in one another and in sympathy with each other. This event is the consequence of some other one. Things push and pull on each other, and breathe together, and are ONE.

Marcus Aurelius
Never act without purpose and resolve, or without the means to finish the job.

Marcus Aurelius
When we consider we are bound to be serviceable to mankind, and bear with their faults, we shall perceive there is a common tie of nature and relation between us.

Marcus Aurelius
Body. Soul. Mind. Sensations: the body. Desires: the soul. Reasoning: the mind.

Marcus Aurelius
People who labor all their lives but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse toward are wasting their time-even when hard at work.

Marcus Aurelius
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.

Marcus Aurelius
Think of the country mouse and of the town mouse, and of the alarm and trepidation of the town mouse.

Marcus Aurelius
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.

Marcus Aurelius
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.

Marcus Aurelius
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.

Marcus Aurelius
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.

Marcus Aurelius