Marcus Aurelius Quotes

The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.

Everything that happens happens as it should, and if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so.

Thou art a little soul bearing about a corpse.

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.

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

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.

The best way of avenging thyself is not to become like the wrong-doer.

Take away the complaint, 'I have been harmed,' and the harm is taken away.

When you need encouragement, think of the qualities the people around you have: this one's energy, that one's modesty, another's generosity, and so on. Nothing is as encouraging as when virtues are visibly embodied in the people around us, when we're practically showered with them. It's good to keep this in mind.

One whose chief regard is for his own mind, and for the divinity within him and the service of its goodness, will strike no poses, utter no complaints, and crave neither for solitude nor yet for a crowd. Best of all, his life will be free from continual pursuing and avoiding.

Let every action aim solely at the common good.

Be cheerful, also, and seek not external help, nor the peace which others give. A man must stand straight, and not be kept straight by others.

How ridiculous not to flee from one's own wickedness, which is possible, yet endeavor to flee from another's which is not.

The offender needs pity, not wrath; those who must needs be corrected, should be treated with tact and gentleness; and one must be always ready to learn better. 'The best kind of revenge is, not to become like unto them.'

Limit time to the present. Meditate upon your last hour.

Stop whatever you're doing for a moment and ask yourself: Am I afraid of death because I won't be able to do this anymore?

This is moral perfection: to live each day as though it were the last; to be tranquil, sincere, yet not indifferent to one's fate.

From Alexander the Platonic, not frequently nor without necessity to say to any one, or to write in a letter, that I have no leisure; nor continually to excuse the neglect of duties required by our relation to those with whom we live, by alleging urgent occupations.

No form of nature is inferior to art; for the arts merely imitate natural forms.

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

Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.

Your life is an expression of all your thoughts.

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.

What springs from earth dissolves to earth again, and heaven-born things fly to their native seat.

Do every act of your life as if it were your last.

In the same degree in which a man's mind is nearer to freedom from all passion, in the same degree also is it nearer to strength.

Let not your mind run on what you lack as much as on what you have already.

Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretence.

Were you to live three thousand years, or even thirty thousand, remember that the sole life which a man can lose is that which he is living at the moment; and furthermore, that he can have no other life except the one he loses.

I search after truth, by which man never yet was harmed.

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.

A man's true delight is to do the things he was made for.

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.

People generally despise where they flatter, and cringe to those they would gladly overtop; so that truth and ceremony are two things.

We are too much accustomed to attribute to a single cause that which is the product of several, and the majority of our controversies come from that.

All things change, and you yourself are constantly wasting away. So also is the universe.

A man makes no noise over a good deed, but passes on to another as a vine to bear grapes again in season.

Objective judgement, now, at this very moment. Unselfish action, now, at this very moment. Willing acceptance - now, at this very moment - of all external events. That's all you need.

Today I escaped all circumstance, or rather I cast out all circumstance, for it was not outside me, but within my judgements.

He who fears death either fears the loss of sensation or a different kind of sensation. But if thou shalt have no sensation, neither wilt thou feel any harm; and if thou shalt acquire another kind of sensation, thou wilt be a different kind of living being and thou wilt not cease to live.

For a man can lose neither the past nor the future; for how can one take from him that which is not his? So remember these two points: first, that each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle, and that it signifies not whether a man shall look upon the same things for a hundred years or two hundred, or for an infinity of time; second, that the longest lived and the shortest lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing.

All that is from the gods is full of Providence.

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.

When thou art above measure angry, bethink thee how momentary is man's life.

Never forget that the universe is a single living organism possessed of one substance and one soul, holding all things suspended in a single consciousness and creating all things with a single purpose that they might work together spinning and weaving and knotting whatever comes to pass.

Confine yourself to the present.

It is a sin to persue pleasure as a good and to avoid pain as a evil.

Whatever any one does or says, I must be good; just as if the emerald were always saying this: "Whatever any one does or says, I must still be emerald, and keep my color.