Marcus Aurelius - Meditations (180 AD)

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Yes, you can—if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable.

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
Socrates used to call the opinions of the many by the name of Lamiae, bugbears to frighten children.

Marcus Aurelius
Think on this doctrine,—that reasoning beings were created for one another's sake; that to be patient is a branch of justice, and that men sin without intending it.

Marcus Aurelius
To live each day as though one's last, never flustered, never apathetic, never attitudinizing – here is perfection of character.

Marcus Aurelius
In the case of all things which have a certain constitution, whatever harm may happen to any of them, that which is affected becomes consequently worse; but in like case, a man becomes both better... and more worthy of praise, by making the right use of these accidents.

Marcus Aurelius
A little time, and thou shalt close thy eyes; and him who has attended thee to thy grave, another soon will lament.

Marcus Aurelius
Observe always that everything is the result of a change, and get used to thinking that there is nothing Nature loves so well as to change existing forms and to make new ones like them.

Marcus Aurelius
The passing minute is every man's equal possession but what has once gone by is not ours.

Marcus Aurelius
All men are made one for another: either then teach them better or bear with them.

Marcus Aurelius
Look within. Within is the fountain of the good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.

Marcus Aurelius
As the nature of the universal has given to every rational being all the powers that it has, so we have received from it this power also. For as the universal nature converts and fixes in its predestined place everything which stands in the way and opposes it, and makes such things a part of itself, so also the rational animal is able to make every hindrance its own material, and to use it for such purpose as it may have designed.

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 universal intelligence puts itself in motion for every separate effect... or it puts itself in motion once, and everything else comes by way of a sequence in a manner; or individual elements are the origin of all things. In a word, if there is a god, all is well; and if chance rules, do not thou be governed by it.

Marcus Aurelius
How many, once lauded in song, are given over to the forgotten; and how many who sung their praises are clean gone long ago!

Marcus Aurelius
The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, for it requires that we should stand ready and firm to meet onsets which are sudden and unexpected.

Marcus Aurelius
In the morning, when you are sluggish about getting up, let this thought be present: "I am rising to a man's work."

Marcus Aurelius
Is it not better to use what is in thy power like a free man than to desire in a slavish and abject way what is not in thy power?

Marcus Aurelius
The happiness of those who want to be popular depends on others; the happiness of those who seek pleasure fluctuates with moods outside their control; but the happiness of the wise grows out of their own free acts.

Marcus Aurelius
If thou canst see sharp, look and judge wisely, says the philosopher.

Marcus Aurelius
You want praise from people who kick themselves every fifteen minutes, the approval of people who despise themselves. (Is it a sign of self-respect to regret nearly everything you do?)

Marcus Aurelius
At day's first light have in readiness, against disinclination to leave your bed, the thought that "I am rising for the work of man."

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
Mankind have been created for the sake of one another. Either instruct them, therefore, or endure them.

Marcus Aurelius
You are making an inopportune rejection of what Nature has given you today, if all your mind is set on what men will say of you tomorrow.

Marcus Aurelius
Our anger and annoyance are more detrimental to us than the things themselves which anger or annoy us.

Marcus Aurelius
You don't love yourself enough. Or you'd love your nature too, and what it demands of you. People who love what they do wear themselves down doing it, they even forget to wash or eat. Do you have less respect for your own nature than the engraver does for engraving, the dancer for the dance, the miser for money or the social climber for status? When they're really possessed by what they do, they'd rather stop eating and sleeping than give up practicing their arts. Is helping others less valuable to you? Not worth your effort?

Marcus Aurelius
Blot out vain pomp; check impulse; quench appetite; keep reason under its own control.

Marcus Aurelius
Art thy not content that thou hast done something conformable to thy nature, and dost thou seek to be paid for it? Just as if the eye demanded recompense for seeing, or the feet for walking. For as these members are formed for a particular purpose... so also is man formed by nature to acts of benevolence.

Marcus Aurelius
Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and one soul; and observe how all things have reference to one perception, the perception of this one living being; and how all things act with one movement; and how all things are the cooperating causes of all things which exist; observe too the continuous spinning of the thread and the contexture of the web.

Marcus Aurelius