Quotes from Marcus Aurelius

In evaluating a person, always look for their ruling principles. What do they pursue? What do they avoid? Don't judge others based on outward circumstances and appearances. Difficult circumstances can befall anyone—what is telling is how a person responds to their circumstances. Their body may be maimed, dirtied, and disfigured, while the light of reason burns bright within.

People find pleasure in different ways. I find it in keeping my mind clear. In not turning away from people or the things that happen to them. In accepting and welcoming everything I see. In treating each thing as it deserves.

When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly.

The idea of a polity in which there is the same law for all, a polity administered with regard to equal rights and equal freedom of speech, and the idea of a government which respects most of all, the freedom of the governed.

Everywhere and continually it is in your power to be reverently content with your present circumstance, to behave to men who are present with you according to right and to handle skillfully the present impression, that nothing you have not mastered may cross the threshold of the mind.

Toys and fooleries at home, wars abroad: sometimes terror, sometimes torpor, or stupid sloth: this is thy daily slavery.

Better is what benefits

43. People find pleasure in different ways. I find it in keeping my mind clear. In not turning away from people or the things that happen to them. In accepting and welcoming everything I see. In treating each thing as it deserves.

Never act without purpose; make sure that all your actions conform to the philosophical principles that constitute the art of living.

remember this principle when something threatens to cause you pain: the thing itself was no misfortune at all; to endure it and prevail is great good fortune.

But literature served only as a preparation for the real goal. This was rhetoric, the key to an active political career under the empire, as it had been under the Republic.

Cast aside all that is extraneous and superfluous, and cling to the few things that really matter.

Just remember: you can endure anything your mind can make endurable, by treating it as in your interest to do so. In your interest, or in your nature.

A man then must stand erect, not be kept erect by others.

Nature would not have overlooked such dangers through failing to recognize them, or because it saw them but was powerless to prevent or correct them. Nor would it ever, through inability or incompetence, make such a mistake as to let good and bad things happen indiscriminately to good and bad alike.

Imperturbabilidad con respecto a lo que acontece como resultado de una causa exterior y justicia en las cosas que se producen por una causa que de ti proviene. Es decir, instintos y acciones que desembocan en el mismo objetivo: obrar de acuerdo con el bien común, en la convicción de que esta tarea es acorde con tu naturaleza

In a sense, people are our proper occupation

Not to display anger or other emotions. To be free of passion and yet full of love. To praise without bombast; to display expertise without pretension.

contenting thyself with heroical truth, thou shalt live happily; and

Will a little fame distract you?

Love that only which happens to thee and is spun with the thread of thy destiny. For what is more suitable? In

Get rid of the judgment; you are rid of the 'I am hurt'; get rid of the 'I am hurt,' you are rid of the hurt itself.

He could say, it is true, 'either there is a God, and then all is well; or if all things go by chance and fortune, yet mayest thou use thine own providence in those things that concern thee properly; and then art thou well.

There's no retreat more peaceful and untroubled than a man's own mind, and this is especially true of a man who has inner resources which are such that he has only to dip into them to be entirely untroubled