Quotes from Marcus Aurelius

To the best of my judgment, when I look at the human character I see no virtue placed there to counter justice. But I see one to counter pleasure: self-control.

Now it is true that these may impede my action, but they are no impediments to my affects and disposition, which have the power of acting conditionally and changing: for the mind converts and changes every hindrance to its activity into an aid; and so that which is a hindrance is made a furtherance to an act; and an obstacle on the road helps us along this road.

Thou art a little soul bearing about a corpse, as Epictetus used to say. It is no evil for things to undergo change, and no good for things to subsist in consequence of change.

And here are two of the most immediately useful thoughts you will dip into. First that things cannot touch the mind: they are external and inert; anxieties can only come from your internal judgement. Second, hat all these things you see will change almost as you look at them, and then will be no more. Constantly bring to mind all that you yourself have already seen changed. The universe is change: life is judgement.

A man without ever the least appearance of anger, or any other passion; able at the same time most exactly to observe the Stoic Apathia, or unpassionateness, and yet to be most tender-hearted: ever of good credit; and yet almost without any noise, or rumour: very learned, and yet making little show.

Change: nothing inherently bad in the process, nothing inherently good in the result.

It is a shame when the soul is first to give way in this life, and the body does not give way.

None of us have much time. And yet you act as if things were eternal—the way you fear and long for them.… Before long, darkness. And whoever buries you mourned in their turn.

The freedom to do only what God wants, and accept whatever God sends us.

Let nothing be done rashly, and at random, but all things according to the most exact and perfect rules of art.

The way to peace is to be content with yourself, honor the light of reason within, live in harmony with others, and be grateful to the gods for the universe and your role in it.

Souviens toi que chacun ne vit que dans le moment présent, dans l'instant. Le reste, c'est le passé ou un obscur avenir. Petite est donc l'étendue de la vie.

A prudent governor will not roughly oppose even the superstitions of his people; and though he may wish they were wiser, he will know that he cannot make them so by offending their prejudices.

When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own—not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine.

Death. The end of sense-perception, of being controlled by our emotions, of mental activity, of enslavement to our bodies.

No longer wander at hazard; for neither wilt thou read thy own memoirs, nor the acts of the ancient Romans and Hellenes, and the selections from books which thou wast reserving for thy old age. Hasten then to the end which thou hast before thee, and throwing away idle hopes, come to thy own aid, if thou carest at all for thyself, while it is in thy power.

At some point you have to recognize what world it is that you belong to; what power rules it and from what source you spring; that there is a limit to the time assigned you, and if you don't use it to free yourself it will be gone and will never return.

How cruel it is not to allow a man to strive after the things which appear to them to be suitable to their nature and profitable! And yet in a manner thou dost not allow them to do this, when thou art vexed because they do wrong. For they are certainly moved towards things because they suppose them to be suitable to their nature and profitable to them - But it is not so - Teach them, then, and show them without being angry.

Be not querulous, be Content with little, be kind, be free; avoid all superfluity, all vain prattling; be magnanimous.

It stares you in the face. No role is so well suited to philosophy as the one you happen to be in right now.

But death and life, honor and dishonor, pain and pleasure—all these things equally happen to good men and bad, being things which make us neither better nor worse. Therefore they are neither good nor evil.

Let not the future trouble you; for you will come to it, if come you must, bearing with you the same reason which you are using now to meet the present.

Whatever happens to you has been waiting to happen since the beginning of time. The twining strands of fate wove both of them together: your own existence and the things that happen to you.

He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.