Marcus Aurelius Quotes
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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.
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A wrongdoer is often a man who has left something undone, not always one who has done something.
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But if we judge only those things which are in our power to be good or bad, there remains no reason either for finding fault with God or standing in a hostile attitude to man.
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To change your mind and to follow him who sets you right is to be nonetheless the free agent that you were before.
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What is divine is full of Providence. Even chance is not divorced from nature, from the inweaving and enfolding of things governed by Providence. Everything proceeds from it. (Hays translation)
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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.
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The intelligence of the universe is social.
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Find time still to be learning somewhat good, and give up being desultory.
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Ἕωθεν προλέγειν ἑαυτῷ: συντεύξομαι περιέργῳ, ἀχαρίστῳ, ὑβριστῇ, δολερῷ, βασκάνῳ, ἀκοινωνήτῳ: πάντα ταῦτα συμβέβηκεν ἐκείνοις παρὰ τὴν ἄγνοιαν τῶν ἀγαθῶν καὶ κακῶν.
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The longest-lived and the shortest-lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing.
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Whatever this is that I am, it is flesh and a little spirit and an intelligence. (Hays translation)
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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.
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What means all this?
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He who fears death either fears to lose all sensation or fears new sensations. In reality, you will either feel nothing at all, and therefore nothing evil, or else, if you can feel any sensations, you will be a new creature, and so will not have ceased to have life.
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Be thou erect, or be made erect.
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Where any work can be done conformably to the reason which is common to gods and men, there we have nothing to fear; for where we are able to get profit by means of the activity which is successful and proceeds according to our constitution, there no harm is to be suspected.
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At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: ‘I have to go to work – as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for – the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?’ (Hays translation)
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When thou art offended at any man's fault, forthwith turn to thyself and reflect in what manner thou doest error thyself... For by attending to this thou wilt quickly forget thy anger, if this consideration is also added, that the man is compelled; for what else could he do? or, if thou art able, take away from him the compulsion.
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Constantly contemplate the whole of time and the whole of substance, and consider that all individual things as to substance are a grain of a fig, and as to time the turning of a gimlet.
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Ἔσω βλέπε· μηδενὸς πράγματος μήτε ἡ ἰδία ποιότης μήτε ἡ ἀξία παρατρεχέτω σε.
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Nature which governs the whole will soon change all things which thou seest, and out of there substance will make other things, and again other things from the substance of them, in order that the world may ever be new.
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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.
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You want praise from people who kick themselves every fifteen minutes, the approval of people who despise themselves. (Is it a sign of self-respect to regret nearly everything you do?) (Hays translation)
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On the occasion of every act ask thyself, How is this with respect to me? Shall I repent of it? A little time and I am dead, and all is gone.