Marcus Aurelius Quotes
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Thou mayest foresee... the things which will be. For they will certainly be of like form, and it is not possible that they should deviate from the order of things now: accordingly to have contemplated human life for forty years is the same as to have contemplated it for ten thousand years.
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Yet living and dying, honour and dishonour, pain and pleasure, riches and poverty, and so forth are equally the lot of good men and bad. Things like these neither elevate nor degrade; and therefore they are no more good than they are evil.
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Remember that all is opinion.
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Nothing happens to anyone that he can't endure. (Hays translation)
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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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There is no nature which is inferior to art, the arts imitate the nature of things.
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Reverence the gods, and help men. Short is life.
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I consist of a little body and a soul.
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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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Think not disdainfully of death, but look on it with favor; for even death is one of the things that Nature wills.
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No state sorrier than that of the man who keeps up a continual round, and pries into 'the secrets of the nether world,' as saith the poet, and is curious in conjecture of what is in his neighbour's heart.
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Remember that man lives only in the present, in this fleeting instant; all the rest of his life is either past and gone, or not yet revealed. Short, therefore, is man's life, and narrow is the corner of the earth wherein he dwells.
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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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Be not as one that hath ten thousand years to live; death is nigh at hand: while thou livest, while thou hast time, be good.
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Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.
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Remember that what pulls the strings is the force hidden within; there lies the power to persuade, there the life,-there, if one must speak out, the real man.
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Think on this doctrine,-that reasoning beings were created for one another's sake; that to be patient is a branch of justice, and that men sin without intending it.
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From Antisthenes: It is royal to do good and be abused.
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All that is harmony for you, my Universe, is in harmony with me as well. Nothing that comes at the right time for you is too early or too late for me. Everything is fruit to me that your seasons bring, Nature. All things come of you, have their being in you, and return to you.
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Let there be freedom from perturbations with respect to the things which come from the external cause; and let there be justice in the things done by virtue of the internal cause, that is, let there be movement and action terminating in this, in social acts, for this is according to thy nature.
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Nature has had regard in everything no less to the end than to the beginning and the continuance, just like a man who throws up a ball. What good is it then for the ball to be thrown up, or harm for it to come down... what good is it to the bubble while it holds together, or what harm when it is burst?
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Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered: and all this in a nook of this part of the world; and not even here do all agree, no, not any one with himself: and the whole earth too is a point.
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Remember this, then, that this little compound, thyself, must either be dissolved, or they poor breath must be extinguished, or be removed and placed elsewhere.
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He that dies in extreme old age will be reduced to the same state with him that is cut down untimely.