Marcus Aurelius Quotes
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Blot out vain pomp; check impulse; quench appetite; keep reason under its own control.
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Remember that all is opinion.
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In the constitution of that rational animal I see no virtue which is opposed to justice, but I see a virtue which is opposed to love of pleasure, and that is temperance.
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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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Love the little trade which thou hast learned, and be content therewith.
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There are three relations between thee and other things: the one to the body which surrounds thee; the second to the divine cause from which all things come to all; and the third to those who live with thee.
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A man standing by a spring of clear, sweet water and cursing it. While the fresh water keeps on bubbling up. He can shovel mud into it, or dung, and the stream will carry it away, wash itself clean, remain unstained. (Hays translation)
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Use these rules then, and trouble thyself about nothing else.
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That which had grown from the earth, to the earth, But that which has sprung from heavenly seed, Back to the heavenly realms returns. This is either a dissolution of the mutual involution of the atoms, or a similar dispersion of the unsentient elements.
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Turn thy thoughts now to the consideration of thy life, thy life as a child, as a youth, thy manhood, thy old age, for in these also every change was a death. Is this anything to fear?
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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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For thus it is, men of Athens, in truth: wherever a man has placed himself thinking it is the best place for him, or has been placed by a commander, there in my opinion he ought to stay and to abide the hazard, taking nothing into the reckoning, either death or anything else, before the baseness of deserting his post.
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The nature of the All moved to make the universe.
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Thou art a little soul bearing about a corpse, as Epictetus used to say.
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He would be the finer gentleman that should leave the world without having tasted of lying or pretence of any sort, or of wantonness or conceit.
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Is any man afraid of change? Why what can take place without change?
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Let this always be plain to thee, that this piece of land is like any other; and that all things here are the same with all things on the top of a mountain, or on the sea-shore, or wherever thou chooses to be. For thou wilt find just what Plato says, Dwelling within the walls of the city as in a shepherd's fold on a mountain.
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The art of life is more like the wrestler's art than the dancer's, in respect of this, that it should stand ready and firm to meet onsets which are sudden and unexpected.
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The controlling Intelligence understands its own nature, and what it does, and whereon it works.
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Deem not life a thing of consequence. For look at the yawning void of the future, and at that other limitless space, the past.
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What is my ruling faculty now to me? and of what nature am I now making it? and for what purpose am I now using it? is it void of understanding? is it loosed and rent asunder from social life? is it melted and mixed with the poor flesh so as to move together with it?
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All things are changing; and thou thyself art in continuous mutation and in a manner in continuous destruction and the whole universe to.
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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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γεγόναμεν γὰρ πρὸς συνεργίαν ὡς πόδες, ὡς χεῖρες, ὡς βλέφαρα, ὡς οἱ στοῖχοι τῶν ἄνω καὶ κάτω ὀδόντων. τὸ οὖν ἀντιπράσσειν ἀλλήλοις παρὰ φύσιν.