Marcus Aurelius Quotes

Why should any of these things that happen externally distract thee? Give thyself leisure to learn some good thing: cease roving to and fro.

Our wills are ours, to make them Thine.

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.

Doth perfect beauty stand in need of praise at all? Nay; no more than law, no more than truth, no more than loving kindness, nor than modesty.

Think not disdainfully of death, but look on it with favor; for even death is one of the things that Nature wills.

I bless the gods for not letting my education in rhetoric, poetry, and other literary studies come easily to me, and thereby sparing me from an absorbing interest in these subjects.

Find time still to be learning somewhat good, and give up being desultory.

Do not consider anything for your interest which makes you break your word, quit your modesty or inclines you to any practice which will not bear the light or look the world in the face.

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

A good disposition is invincible, if it be genuine.

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

My city and state are Rome. But as a human being? The world. So for me, "good" can only mean what's good for both communities.

The controlling Intelligence understands its own nature, and what it does, and whereon it works.

I consist of a little body and a soul.

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.

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

People exist for one another.

We are born for cooperation

The ruling power within, when it is in its natural state, is so related to outer circumstances that it easily changes to accord with what can be done and what is given it to do.

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.

Thou seest how few be the things, the which if a man has at his command his life flows gently on and is divine.

The mind in itself wants nothing, unless it creates a want for itself; therefore it is both free from perturbation and unimpeded, if it does not perturb and impede itself.

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."

All things from eternity are of like forms and come round in circle.

All those [events in history] were such dramas as we see now, only with different actors.

As for life, it is a battle and a sojourning in a strange land; but the fame that comes after is oblivion.

Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest been lived already, or is impossible to see. The span we live is small - small as the corner of the earth in which we live it.

The perfection of moral character consists in this, in passing every day as the last, and in being neither violently excited nor torpid nor playing the hypocrite.

Nature in no case cometh short of art, for the arts are copiers of natural forms.

Waste not the remnant of thy life in those imaginations touching other folk, whereby thou contributest not to the common weal.

Let thine occupations be few, saith the sage, if thou wouldst lead a tranquil life.

Every being ought to do that which is according to its constitution; and all other things have been constituted for the sake of the superior, but the rational for the sake of one another.

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

Why should a man have any apprehension about the change and dissolution of all the elements? For it is according to nature, and nothing is evil which is according to nature.

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.

And can anything else that is useful be accomplished without change? Do you not see then that for yourself also to change is just the same, and equally necessary for the universal nature?

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.

Retire into thyself. The rational principle which rules has this nature, that it is content with itself when it does what is just, and so secures tranquility.

Thou art a little soul bearing about a corpse.

From Apollonius I learned freedom of will and undeviating steadiness of purpose; and to look to nothing else, not even for a moment, except to reason.

Wherever a man lives, he may live well.

Unhappy am I because this has happened to me.- Not so, but happy am I, though this has happened to me, because I continue free from pain, neither crushed by the present nor fearing the future.

The body of an actor can be either his best friend or his worst enemy.

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.

The true joy of humankind is in doing that which is most proper to our nature; and the first property of people is to be kindly affected towards them that are of one kind with ourselves.

As the same fire assumes different shapes When it consumes objects differing in shape, So does the one Self take the shape Of every creature in whom he is present.

A man's happiness,-to do the things proper to man.

Hast thou reason? I have. Why then dost not thou use it? For if this does its own work, what else dost thou wish?

A man is a little soul carrying around a courpse.

If any man has done wrong, the harm is his own. But perhaps he has not done wrong.