Marcus Aurelius Quotations | Page 7

Let thy chief fort and place of defense be a mind free from passions. A stronger place and better fortified than this, hath no man.

If the gods care not for me and for my children, There is a reason for it.

Let it judge that nothing is either bad or good which can happen equally to the bad man and the good. For that which happens equally to him who lives contrary to nature and to him who lives according to nature, is neither according to nature nor contrary to nature.

Infinity is a fathomless gulf, into which all things vanish.

You need to be prepared for firm decisions and action, without losing gentleness towards those who obstruct or abuse you. It's as great a weakness to be angry with them as it is to abandon your plan of action and give up through fear.

When you have done a good deed that another has had the benefit of, why do you need a third reward-as fools do-praise for having done well or looking for a favor in return.

Nothing befalls any man which he is not fitted to endure.

Whatever may happen to thee, it was prepared for thee from all eternity ...

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

God sees the inner spirit stripped of flesh, skin, and all debris. For his own mind only touches the spirit that he has allowed to flow from himself into our bodies. And if you can act the same way, you will rid yourself of all suffering. For surely if you are not preoccupied with the body that encloses you, you will not trouble yourself about clothes, houses, fame, and other showy trappings.

If you are pained by any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it. It is in your power to erase this judgment about it. If anything in your own nature gives you pain, you are who hinders you from correcting your opinion.

It is not the weight of the future or the past that is pressing upon you, but ever that of the present alone. Even this burden, too, can be lessened if you confine it strictly to its own limits.

Remember that the sole life which a man can lose is that which he is living at the moment.

Nature has given to each conscious being every power she possesses, and one of these abilities is this: just as Nature converts and alters every obstacle and opposition, and fits them into their predestined place, making them a part of herself, so too the rational person is able to finesse every obstacle into an opportunity, and to use it for whatever purpose it may suit.

In reading and writing, you cannot lay down rules until you have learnt to obey them. Much more so in life.

A man does not sin by commission only, but often by omission.

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

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.

Suppose that men kill thee, cut thee in pieces, curse thee, what can these things do to prevent thy mind from remaining pure, wise, sober, just?

The sinner sins against himself; the wrongdoer wrongs himself, becoming the worse by his own action.

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.

Anything that is beautiful is beautiful just as it is. Praise forms no part of its beauty, since praise makes things neither better nor worse. This applies even more to what it commonly called beautiful: natural objects, for example, or works of art. True beauty has no need of anything beyond itself.

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

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.

Thou sufferest justly: for thou choosest rather to become good to-morrow than to be good to-day.

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

Be not unwilling in what thou doest, neither selfish nor unadvised nor obstinate; let not over-refinement deck out thy thought; be not wordy nor a busybody.

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.

Always take the short cut; and that is the rational one. Therefore say and do everything according to soundest reason.

Everywhere and at all times it is in thy power piously to acquiesce in thy present condition, and to behave justly to those who are about thee, and to exert thy skill upon thy present thoughts, that nothing shall steal into them without being well examined.

Understand however that every man is worth just so much as the things are worth about which he busies himself.

Everything is in a state of metamorphosis. Thou thyself art in everlasting change and in corruption to correspond; so is the whole universe.

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.

Purge your mind of all aimless and idle thoughts, especially those that pry into the affairs of others or wish them ill.

Remember that neither the future nor the past pains thee, but only the present. But this is reduced to a very little, if thou only circumscribest it, and chidest thy mind, if it is unable to hold out against even this.

Remember that even if you were to live for three thousand years, or thirty thousand, you could not lose any other life than the one you have, and there will be no other life after it. So the longest and the shortest lives are the same. The present moment is shared by all living creatures, but the time that is past is gone forever. No one can lose the past or the future, for if they don't belong to you, how can they be taken from you?

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

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.

Let every action aim solely at the common good.

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.

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.

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

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.

I am called to man's labour; why then do I make a difficulty if I am going out to do what I was born to do and what I was brought into the world for?

Does the light of the lamp shine without losing its splendour until it is extinguished; and shall the truth which is in thee and justice and temperance be extinguished before thy death?

All is Ephemeral, fame and the famous as well.

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.

The stone that is thrown into the air is none the worse for falling down, and none the better for going up.

If this is neither my own badness, nor an effect of my own badness, and the common weal is not injured, why am I troubled about it? And what is the harm to the common weal?

Do not be ashamed of help.

As far as you can, get into the habit of asking yourself in relation to any action taken by another: "What is his point of reference here?" But begin with yourself: examine yourself first.

It is not the actions of others which trouble us (for those actions are controlled by their governing part), but rather it is our own judgments. Therefore remove those judgments and resolve to let go of your anger, and it will already be gone. How do you let go? By realizing that such actions are not shameful to you.

The most complete revenge is not to imitate the aggressor.

Every living organism is fulfilled when it follows the right path for its own nature.

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

Why do we shrink from change? What can come into being save by change?

Everything is only for a day ... the universe loves nothing so much as to change things.

The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts.

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

It is a shameful thing for the soul to faint while the body still perseveres.

Both happiness and unhappiness depend on perception

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.

How powerful is man! He is able to do all that God wishes him to do. He is able to accept all that God sends upon him.

Live each day as if it be your last.

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.

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

Everything that happens, happens as it should.

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

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

Whatever may happen to you was prepared for you from all eternity; and the implication of causes was from eternity spinning the thread of your being.

Either an ordered Universe or a medley heaped together mechanically but still an order; or can order subsist in you and disorder in the Whole! And that, too, when all things are so distinguished and yet intermingled and sympathetic.

Tranquility is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind.

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

Remember that all things are only opinion and that it is in your power to think as you please.

The constant recollection of death is the test of human conduct.

This is the chief thing: be not perturbed, for all things are according to the nature of the universal.

He who does wrong does wrong against himself. He who acts unjustly acts unjustly to himself, because he makes himself bad.

No form of nature is inferior to art; for the arts merely imitate natural forms. - Variant: There is no nature which is inferior to art, the arts imitate the nature of things.

If unwilling to rise in the morning, say to thyself, 'I awake to do the work of a man.'

Put from you the belief that 'I have been wronged', and with it will go the feeling. Reject your sense of injury, and the injury itself disappears.

The inner master, when confronted with an obstacle, uses it as fuel, like a fire which consumes things that are thrown into it. A small lamp would be snuffed out, but a big fire will engulf what is thrown at it and burn hotter; it consumes the obstacle and uses it to reach a higher level.

In man's life, time is but a moment; being, a flux; sense is dim; the material frame corruptible; soul, an eddy of breath; fortune a thing inscrutable, and fame precarious.

Don't let your imagination be crushed by life as a whole.

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.

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

Whatever anyone does or says, I must be emerald and keep my colour.

Life is a stranger's sojourn, a night at an inn.

Snow endures but for a season, and joy comes with the morning.

Nothing proceeds from nothingness, as also nothing passes away into non-existence.

There is change in all things. You yourself are subject to continual change and some decay, and this is common to the entire universe.

How easy it is to repel and release every impression which is troublesome and immediately to be tranquil.

Is any man afraid of change? Why what can take place without change? What then is more pleasing or more suitable to the universal nature?

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...

You have to assemble your life yourself - action by action.

Can anything that is useful be accomplished without change?

Stick to what's in front of you - idea, action, utterance.

To them that ask: Where hast thou seen the Gods, or how knowest thou certainly that there be Gods, that thou art so devout in their worship? I answer: Neither have I seen my own soul, and yet I respect and honor it.

Neither worse then or better is a thing made by being praised.

In the life of a man, his time is but a moment, his being an incessant flux, his sense a dim rushlight, his body a prey of worms, his soul an unquiet eddy, his fortune dark, his fame doubtful. In short, all that is body is as coursing waters, all that is of the soul as dreams and vapors.

Though you break your heart, men will go on as before.