Quotes from Marcus Aurelius

That which makes the man no worse than he was makes his life no worse: it has no power to harm, without or within.

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.

How powerful is man! He is able to do all that God wishes him to do. He is able to accept all that God sends upon him.

Thou seest how few be the things, the which if a man has at his command his life flows gently on and is divine.

Wherever a man lives, he may live well.

Though thou be destined to live three thousand years and as many myriads besides, yet remember that no man loseth other life than that which he liveth, nor liveth other than that which he loseth.

A man's happiness,-to do the things proper to man.

A man is a little soul carrying around a courpse.

If any man has done wrong, the harm is his own. But perhaps he has not done wrong.

Remember that all is opinion. For what was said by the Cynic Monimus is manifest: and manifest too is the use of what was said, if a man receives what may be got out of it as far as it is true.

Remember that the sole life which a man can lose is that which he is living at the moment.

...small too even the longest fame thereafter, which is itself subject to a succession of little men who quickly die, and have no knowledge of themselves, let alone of those long dead.

The longest-lived and the shortest-lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing.

I am called to man's labour; why then do I make a difficulty if I am going out to do what I was born to do and what I was brought into the world for?

A man should remove not only unnecessary acts, but also unnecessary thoughts, for then superfluous activity will not follow.

Men exist for each other. Then either improve them, or put up with them.

Dress not thy thoughts in too fine a raiment. And be not a man of superfluous words or superfluous deeds.

Snow endures but for a season, and joy comes with the morning.

"Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busy-body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial

Poverty is the mother of crime.

Don't be ashamed to need help. Like a soldier storming a wall, you have a mission to accomplish. And if you've been wounded and you need a comrade to pull you up? So what?

Every man's life lies within the present; for the past is spent and done with, and the future is uncertain.

Look within, for within is the wellspring of virtue, which will not cease flowing, if you cease not from digging.

Take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.