Marcus Aurelius Quotes
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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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From Plato: the man who has an elevated mind and takes a view of all time and of all substance, dost thou suppose it possible for him to think that human life is anything great? It is not possible, he said. Such a man then will think that death also is no evil.
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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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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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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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Reverence the gods, and help men. Short is life.
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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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Nothing happens to anyone that he can't endure. (Hays translation)
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I consist of a little body and a soul.
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There is no nature which is inferior to art, the arts imitate the nature of things.
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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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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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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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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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'Let your occupations be few,' says the sage, 'if you would lead a tranquil life.'
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Look to the essence of a thing, whether it be a point of doctrine, of practice, or of interpretation.
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Know the joy of life by piling good deed on good deed until no rift or cranny appears between them.
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From Antisthenes: It is royal to do good and be abused.
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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.
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Adorn thyself with simplicity and with indifference towards the things which lie between virtue and vice. Love mankind. Follow God. The poet says that Law rules all. And it is enough to remember that law rules all.
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Remember that all is opinion.
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If...it be a thing external that causes thy grief, know, that it is not that properly that doth cause it, but thine own conceit and opinion concerning the thing: which thou mayest rid thyself of, when thou wilt.
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Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.
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The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.