Marcus Aurelius Quotes
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Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.
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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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Observe always that everything is the result of a change, and get used to thinking that there is nothing Nature loves so well as to change existing forms and to make new ones like them.
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Whatever may happen to thee, it was prepared for thee from all eternity; and the implication of causes was from eternity spinning the thread of thy being, and of that which is incident to it.
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It is a base thing for the countenance to be obedient and to regulate and compose itself as the mind commands, and for the mind not to be regulated and composed by itself.
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Thou art a little soul bearing about a corpse, as Epictetus used to say.
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Depart then satisfied, for he also who releases thee is satisfied.
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Nothing can come out of nothing, any more than a thing can go back to nothing.
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How many, once lauded in song, are given over to the forgotten; and how many who sung their praises are clean gone long ago!
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Art thou angry with him whose arm-pits stink? art thou angry with him whose mouth smells foul? What good will this anger do thee?
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He was a man who looked at what ought to be done, not to the reputation which is got by a man's acts
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It is not fit that I should give myself pain, for I have never intentionally given pain even to another.
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Consider thyself to be dead, and to have completed thy life up to the present time; and live according to nature the remainder which is allowed thee.
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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.
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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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If man reflects on the changes and transformations which follow one another like wave after wave and their rapidity, he will despise everything which is perishable.
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Let no act be done at haphazard, nor otherwise than according to the finished rules that govern its kind.
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Waste not the remnant of thy life in those imaginations touching other folk, whereby thou contributest not to the common weal.
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If mind is common to us, then also the reason, whereby we are reasoning beings, is common. If this be so, then also the reason which enjoins what is to be done or left undone is common. If this be so, law also is common; if this be so, we are citizens; if this be so, we are partakers in one constitution; if this be so, the Universe is a kind of Commonwealth.
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Remember this- that there is a proper dignity and proportion to be observed in the performance of every act of life.
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And virtue they will curse, speaking harsh words.
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As surgeons keep their instruments and knives always at hand for cases requiring immediate treatment, so shouldst thou have thy thoughts ready to understand things divine and human, remembering in thy every act, even the smallest, how close is the bond that unites the two.
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A man should be upright, not kept upright.
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Be not unwilling in what thou doest, neither selfish nor unadvised nor obstinate; let not over-refinement deck out thy thought; be not wordy nor a busybody.