Marcus Aurelius Quotes

  1. “To understand the true quality of people, you must look into their minds, and examine their pursuits and aversions.” – Marcus Aurelius
  2. “Where a man can live, he can also live well.” – Marcus Aurelius
  3. “Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also.” – Marcus Aurelius
  4. “Death is a release from the impressions of the senses, and from desires that make us their puppets, and from the vagaries of the mind, and from the hard service of the flesh.” – Marcus Aurelius
  5. “Tomorrow is nothing, today is too late; the good lived yesterday.” – Marcus Aurelius
  6. “Here is the rule to remember in the future, When anything tempts you to be bitter: not, ‘This is a misfortune’ but ‘To bear this worthily is good fortune.’ ” – Marcus Aurelius
  7. “Everything that happens happens as it should, and if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so.” – Marcus Aurelius
  8. “If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.” – Marcus Aurelius
  9. “When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.” – Marcus Aurelius
  10. “To refrain from imitation is the best revenge.” – Marcus Aurelius
  11. “Adapt yourself to the things among which your lot has been cast and love sincerely the fellow creatures with whom destiny has ordained that you shall live.” – Marcus Aurelius
  12. “Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.” – Marcus Aurelius
  13. “He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.” – Marcus Aurelius
  14. “Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.” – Marcus Aurelius
  15. “The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.” – Marcus Aurelius
  16. “The universal order and the personal order are nothing but different expressions and manifestations of a common underlying principle.” – Marcus Aurelius
  17. “Be content to seem what you really are.” – Marcus Aurelius
  18. “Death, like birth, is a secret of Nature.” – Marcus Aurelius
  19. “Perhaps there are none more lazy, or more truly ignorant, than your everlasting readers.” – Marcus Aurelius
  20. “Men exist for the sake of one another.” – Marcus Aurelius
  21. “Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.” – Marcus Aurelius
  22. “Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.” – Marcus Aurelius
  23. “Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.” – Marcus Aurelius
  24. “Because a thing seems difficult for you, do not think it impossible for anyone to accomplish.” – Marcus Aurelius
  25. “We ought to do good to others as simply as a horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after season without thinking of the grapes it has borne.” – Marcus Aurelius
  26. “Do every act of your life as if it were your last.” – Marcus Aurelius
  27. “Let men see, let them know, a real man, who lives as he was meant to live.” – Marcus Aurelius
  28. “Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.” – Marcus Aurelius
  29. “Everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be.” – Marcus Aurelius
  30. “Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else.” – Marcus Aurelius
  31. “A man should be upright, not be kept upright.” – Marcus Aurelius
  32. “Anger cannot be dishonest.” – Marcus Aurelius
  33. “The universe is transformation: life is opinion.” – Marcus Aurelius
  34. “You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” – Marcus Aurelius
  35. “Be content with what you are, and wish not change; nor dread your last day, nor long for it.” – Marcus Aurelius
  36. “Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.” – Marcus Aurelius
  37. “The only wealth which you will keep forever is the wealth you have given away.” – Marcus Aurelius
  38. “The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.” – Marcus Aurelius
  39. “To live happily is an inward power of the soul.” – Marcus Aurelius
  40. “Let it be your constant method to look into the design of people’s actions, and see what they would be at, as often as it is practicable; and to make this custom the more significant, practice it first upon yourself.” – Marcus Aurelius
  41. “Aptitude found in the understanding and is often inherited. Genius coming from reason and imagination, rarely.” – Marcus Aurelius
  42. “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.” – Marcus Aurelius
  43. “The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.” – Marcus Aurelius
  44. “The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.” – Marcus Aurelius
  45. “Let not your mind run on what you lack as much as on what you have already.” – Marcus Aurelius
  46. “Execute every act of thy life as though it were thy last.” – Marcus Aurelius
  47. “Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.” – Marcus Aurelius
  48. “The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.” – Marcus Aurelius
  49. “It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” – Marcus Aurelius
  50. “Whatever the universal nature assigns to any man at any time is for the good of that man at that time.” – Marcus Aurelius
  51. “When thou art above measure angry, bethink thee how momentary is man’s life.” – Marcus Aurelius
  52. “Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things like them.” – Marcus Aurelius
  53. “Each day provides its own gifts.” – Marcus Aurelius
  54. “Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.” – Marcus Aurelius
  55. “How much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks.” – Marcus Aurelius
  56. “How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.” – Marcus Aurelius
  57. “Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.” – Marcus Aurelius
  58. “And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last.” – Marcus Aurelius
  59. “Each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle.” – Marcus Aurelius
  60. “There is nothing happens to any person but what was in his power to go through with.” – Marcus Aurelius
  61. “I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinions of himself than on the opinions of others.” – Marcus Aurelius
  62. “Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.” – Marcus Aurelius
  63. “The act of dying is one of the acts of life.” – Marcus Aurelius
  64. “Begin – to begin is half the work, let half still remain; again begin this, and thou wilt have finished.” – Marcus Aurelius
  65. “Our life is what our thoughts make it.” – Marcus Aurelius
  66. “Forward, as occasion offers. Never look round to see whether any shall note it… Be satisfied with success in even the smallest matter, and think that even such a result is no trifle.” – Marcus Aurelius
  67. “Confine yourself to the present.” – Marcus Aurelius
  68. “A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.” – Marcus Aurelius
  69. “A man’s worth is no greater than his ambitions.” – Marcus Aurelius
  70. “To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution.” – Marcus Aurelius
  71. “That which is not good for the bee-hive cannot be good for the bees.” – Marcus Aurelius
  72. “What springs from earth dissolves to earth again, and heaven-born things fly to their native seat.” – Marcus Aurelius
  73. “Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil.” – Marcus Aurelius
  74. “Anything in any way beautiful derives its beauty from itself and asks nothing beyond itself. Praise is no part of it, for nothing is made worse or better by praise.” – Marcus Aurelius
  75. “Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature’s delight.” – Marcus Aurelius
  76. “Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.” – Marcus Aurelius
  77. “The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” – Marcus Aurelius
  78. “Poverty is the mother of crime.” – Marcus Aurelius
  79. “Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.” – Marcus Aurelius

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