Marcus Aurelius Quotes
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Death hangs over thee: whilst yet thou livest, whilst thou mayest, be good.
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Consider that everything is opinion, and opinion is in thy power.
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Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.
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There is a limit to the time assigned you, and if you don't use it to free yourself it will be gone and never return. (Hays translation)
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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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Why dost thou not pray... to give thee the faculty of not fearing any of the things which thou fearest, or of not desiring any of the things which thou desirest, or not being pained at anything, rather than pray that any of these things should not happen or happen?
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No form of Nature is inferior to Art; for the arts merely imitate natural forms.
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Live as on a mountain. ...Let men see, let them know a real man who lives according to nature. If they cannot endure him, let them kill him. For that is better than to live thus.
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This is a fine saying of Plato: That he who is discoursing about men should look also at earthly things as if he viewed them from some higher place; should look at them... a mixture of all things and an orderly combination of contraries.
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Give thyself time to learn something new and good, and cease to be whirled around.
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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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You may break your heart, but men will still go on as before.
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Every being ought to do that which is according to its constitution; and all other things have been constituted for the sake of the superior, but the rational for the sake of one another.
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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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Retire into thyself. The rational principle which rules has this nature, that it is content with itself when it does what is just, and so secures tranquility.
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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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Very little is needed to make a happy life.
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All that happens is as usual and familiar as the rose in spring and the crop in summer.
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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 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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Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.
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Love that only which happens to thee and is spun with the thread of thy destiny. For what is more suitable?
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All those events in history were such dramas as we see now, only with different actors.
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Every soul, the philosopher says, is involuntarily deprived of truth; consequently in the same way it is deprived of justice and temperance and benevolence and everything of the kind. It is most necessary to keep this in mind, for thus thou wilt be more gentle towards all.