Marcus Aurelius Quotes
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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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Know the joy of life by piling good deed on good deed until no rift or cranny appears between them.
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Nothing happens to anyone that he can't endure. (Hays translation)
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Remember that all is opinion.
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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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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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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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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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I consist of a little body and a soul.
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Reverence the gods, and help men. Short is life.
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Ἔσω βλέπε· μηδενὸς πράγματος μήτε ἡ ἰδία ποιότης μήτε ἡ ἀξία παρατρεχέτω σε.
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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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And finally remember that nothing harms him who is really a citizen, which does not harm the state; nor yet does anything harm the state which does not harm law order; and of these things which are called misfortunes not one harms law. What then does not harm law does not harm either state or citizen.
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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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There is no nature which is inferior to art, the arts imitate the nature of things.
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From Antisthenes: It is royal to do good and be abused.
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Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.
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Look within. Within is the fountain of the good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.
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A little time, and thou shalt close thy eyes; and him who has attended thee to thy grave, another soon will lament.
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Blot out vain pomp; check impulse; quench appetite; keep reason under its own control.
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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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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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Direct thy attention to what is said. Let thy understanding enter into the things that are doing and the things which do them.
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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.