Marcus Aurelius Quotes
You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life? If you can manage this, that's all even the gods can ask of you. (Hays translation)
Quotes to Explore
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Wipe out the imagination. Stop pulling the strings. Confine thyself to the present. ...Divide and distribute every object into the causal formal and the material. ...Let the wrong which is done by a man stay there where the wrong was done.
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It is crazy to want what is impossible. And impossible for the wicked not to do so. (Hays translation)
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No carelessness in your actions. No confusion in your words. No imprecision in your thoughts. (Hays translation)
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Everything is in a state of metamorphosis. Thou thyself art in everlasting change and in corruption to correspond; so is the whole universe.
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All things are the same,-familiar in enterprise, momentary in endurance, coarse in substance. All things now are as they were in the day of those whom we have buried.
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Look round at the courses of the stars, as if thou wert going along with them; and constantly consider the changes of the elements into one another; for such thoughts purge away the filth of the terrene life.
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What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bee.
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The happiness and unhappiness of the rational, social animal depends not on what he feels but on what he does; just as his virtue and vice consist not in feeling but in doing.
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The rottenness of the matter which is the foundation of everything!
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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.
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Understand however that every man is worth just so much as the things are worth about which he busies himself.
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All is ephemeral - fame and the famous as well.
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The man who is honest and good ought to be exactly like a man who smells strong, so that the bystander as soon as he comes near him must smell whether he choose or not.
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Things have no hold on the soul. They have no access to it, cannot move or direct it. It is moved and directed by itself alone. It takes the things before it and interprets them as it sees fit. (Hays translation)
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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?
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The things... which are proper to the understanding no other man is used to impede, for neither fire, nor iron, nor tyrant, nor abuse, touches it in any way. When it has been made a sphere, it continues a sphere.
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Do what nature now requires. Set thyself in motion, if it is in thy power, and do not look about thee to see if any one will observe it; nor yet expect Plato's Republic: but be content if the smallest thing goes on well, and consider such an event to be no small matter.
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If any man can convince me and bring home to me that I do not think or act aright, gladly will I change; for I search after truth, by which man never yet was harmed. But he is harmed who abideth on still in his deception and ignorance.
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Men exist for the sake of one another. Teach them then or bear with them. (Long translation)
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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. (Hays translation)
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Let it not be in any man's power to say truly of thee that thou art not simple or that thou art not good; but let him be a liar whoever shall think anything of this kind about thee; and this is altogether in thy power.
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Have I done something for the general interest? Well then I have had my reward. Let this always be present to thy mind, and never stop doing such good.
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To a rational being it is the same thing to act according to nature and according to reason.
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How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.