Marcus Aurelius Quotes & Sayings

We must make haste then, not only because we are daily nearer to death, but also because the conception of things and the understanding of them cease first. — Marcus Aurelius

This thou must always bear in mind, what is the nature of the whole ... — Marcus Aurelius

The constant recollection of death is the test of human conduct. — Marcus Aurelius

He who has seen the present has seen everything, that which happened in the most distant past and that which will happen in the future. — Marcus Aurelius

Altogether the interval is small between birth and death; and consider with how much trouble, and in company with what sort of people and in what a feeble body this interval is laboriously passed. Do not then consider life a thing of any value. For look to the immensity of time behind thee, and to the time which is before thee, another boundless space. In this infinity then what is the difference between him who lives three days and him who lives three generations? — Marcus Aurelius

All is Ephemeral, fame and the famous as well. — Marcus Aurelius

10. Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see. The span we live is small - small as the corner of the earth in which we live it. Small as even the greatest renown, passed from mouth to mouth by short-lived stick figures, ignorant alike of themselves and those long dead. — Marcus Aurelius

If you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable. — Marcus Aurelius

But cast away the thirst after books, that thou mayest not die murmuring, but cheerfully, truly, and from thy heart thankful to the gods. — Marcus Aurelius

Look at everything that exists, and observe that it is already in dissolution and in change, and as it were putrefaction or dispersion, or that everything is so constituted by nature as to die. — Marcus Aurelius

You are a spirit, bearing the weight of a dead body, as Epictetus used to say. — Marcus Aurelius

Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig. — Marcus Aurelius

Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest been lived already, or is impossible to see. The span we live is small - small as the corner of the earth in which we live it. — Marcus Aurelius

Goodness - what defines a good person. Keep to it in everything you do. — Marcus Aurelius

From Alexander the Platonic, not frequently nor without necessity to say to any one, or to write in a letter, that I have not leisure; nor continually to excuse the neglect of duties required by our relations to those with whom we live, by alleging urgent occupations. — Marcus Aurelius

The mind is that which is roused and directed by itself. It makes of itself what it chooses. It makes what it chooses of its own experience. — Marcus Aurelius

In comparing sins (the way people do) Theophrastus says
that the ones committed out of desire are worse than the ones
committed out of anger: which is good philosophy. The angry
man seems to turn his back on reason out of a kind of pain
and inner convulsion. But the man motivated by desire, who
is mastered by pleasure, seems somehow more self-
indulgent, less manly in his sins. Theophrastus is right, and
philosophically sound, to say that the sin committed out of
pleasure deserves a harsher rebuke than the one committed
out of pain. The angry man is more like a victim of
wrongdoing, provoked by pain to anger. The other man
rushes into wrongdoing on his own, moved to action by
desire. — Marcus Aurelius

If a man comes to his fortieth year, and has any understanding at all, he has virtually seen - thanks to their similarity - all possible happenings, both past and to come. — Marcus Aurelius

Remember that even if you were to live for three thousand years, or thirty thousand, you could not lose any other life than the one you have, and there will be no other life after it. So the longest and the shortest lives are the same. The present moment is shared by all living creatures, but the time that is past is gone forever. No one can lose the past or the future, for if they don't belong to you, how can they be taken from you? — Marcus Aurelius

In a sense, people are our proper occupation. Our job is to do them good and put up with them. — Marcus Aurelius

In an expression of true gratitude, sadness is conspicuous only by its absence — Marcus Aurelius

I search after truth, by which man never yet was harmed. — Marcus Aurelius

Not to waste time on nonsense. Not to be taken in by conjurors and hoodoo artists with their talk about incantations and exorcism and all the rest of it. Not to be obsessed with quail-fighting or other crazes like that. — Marcus Aurelius

Nowhere you can go is more peaceful - more free of interruptions - than your own soul. Especially — Marcus Aurelius

For then thou wilt neither blame those who offend involuntarily, nor wilt thou want their approbation, if thou lookest to the sources of their opinions and appetites. — Marcus Aurelius

Things that have a common quality ever quickly seek their kind. — Marcus Aurelius

Do you have reason? I have. Why then do you not use it? For if reason does its own work, what else could you wish for? — Marcus Aurelius

The cucumber is bitter? Then throw it out. There are brambles in the path? Then go around. That's all you need to know. — Marcus Aurelius

VIII. Never esteem of anything as profitable, which shall ever constrain thee either to break thy faith, or to lose thy modesty; to hate any man, to suspect, to curse, to dissemble, to lust after anything, that requireth the secret of walls or veils. — Marcus Aurelius

Happiness is no other than soundness and perfection of mind. — Marcus Aurelius

The noblest kind of retribution is not to become like your enemy. — Marcus Aurelius

Ifit be a thing external that causes thy grief, know, that it is not that properly that doth cause it, but thine own conceit and opinion concerning the thing: which thou mayest rid
thyself of, when thou wilt. — Marcus Aurelius

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? — Marcus Aurelius

If there were anything harmful on the other side of death, they would have made sure that the ability to avoid it was within you. — Marcus Aurelius

Why should anyone be afraid of change? What can take place without it? What can be more pleasing or more suitable to universal nature? Can you take your bath without the firewood undergoing a change? Can you eat without the food undergoing a change? And can anything useful be done without change? Don't you see that for you to change is just the same, and is equally necessary for universal nature? — Marcus Aurelius

To how much envy and fraud and hypocrisy the state of a tyrannous king is subject unto, and how they who are commonly called [Eupatridas Gk.], i.e. nobly born, are in some sort incapable, or void of natural affection. — Marcus Aurelius

In the mind that is once truly disciplined and purged, thou canst not find anything, either foul or impure, or as it were festered: nothing that is either servile, or affected: no partial tie; no malicious averseness; nothing obnoxious; nothing concealed. — Marcus Aurelius

If it's in your control, why do you do it? If it's in someone else's control, then who are you blaming? Atoms? The gods? Stupid either way. Blame no one. Set people straight, if you can. If not, just repair the damage. — Marcus Aurelius

A healthy pair of eyes should see everything that can be
seen and not say, "No! Too bright!" (which is a symptom of
ophthalmia).
A healthy sense of hearing or smell should be prepared for
any sound or scent; a healthy stomach should have the same
reaction to all foods, as a mill to what it grinds.
So too a healthy mind should be prepared for anything.
The one that keeps saying, "Are my children all right?" or
"Everyone must approve of me" is like eyes that can only
stand pale colors, or teeth that can handle only mush. — Marcus Aurelius

Either all things proceed from one intelligent source and come together as in one body, and the part ought not to find fault with what is done for the benefit of the whole; or there are only atoms, and nothing else than a mixture and dispersion. Why, then, art thou disturbed? Say to this ruling faculty, Art thou dead, art thou corrupted, art thou playing the hypocrite, art thou become a beast, dost thou herd and feed with the rest? — Marcus Aurelius

How do we know that Telauges wasn't a better man than Socrates? It's not enough to ask whether Socrates' death was nobler, whether he debated with the sophists more adeptly, whether he showed greater endurance by spending the night out in the cold, and when he was ordered to arrest the man from Salamis decided it was preferable to refuse, and "swaggered about the streets" (which one could reasonably doubt). What matters is what kind of soul he had. Whether he was satisfied to treat men with justice and the gods with reverence and didn't lose his temper unpredictably at evil done by others, didn't make himself the slave of other people's ignorance, didn't treat anything that nature did as abnormal, or put up with it as an unbearable imposition, didn't put his mind in his body's keeping. — Marcus Aurelius

The universal order and the personal order are nothing but different expressions and manifestations of a common underlying principle. — Marcus Aurelius

So you know how things stand. Now forget what they think of you. Be satisfied if you can live the rest of your life, however short, as your nature demands. Focus on that, and don't let anything distract you. You've wandered all over and finally realized that you never found what you were after: how to live. Not in syllogisms, not in money, or fame, or self-indulgence. Nowhere. — Marcus Aurelius

Refrain from all anger and passion. — Marcus Aurelius

When you start to lose your temper, remember: There's nothing manly about rage. It's courtesy and kindness that define a human being - and a man. That's who possesses strength and nerves and guts, not the angry whiners. To react like that brings you closer to impassivity - and so to strength. Pain is the opposite of strength, and so is anger. Both are things we suffer from, and yield to. — Marcus Aurelius

Neither in thy actions be sluggish nor in thy conversation without method, nor wandering in thy thoughts, nor let there be in thy soul inward contention nor external effusion, nor in life be so busy as to have no leisure. — Marcus Aurelius

The despicable phoniness of people who say, "Listen, I'm going to level with you here." What does that mean? It shouldn't even need to be said. It should be obvious - written in block letters on your forehead. It should be audible in your voice, visible in your eyes, like a lover who looks into your face and takes in the whole story at a glance. A straightforward, honest person should be like someone who stinks: when you're in the same room with him, you know it. But false straightforwardness is like a knife in the back. — Marcus Aurelius

Spend your brief moment according to nature's law, and serenely greet the journey's end as an olive falls when it is ripe, blessing the branch that bare it, and giving thanks to the tree that gave it life. — Marcus Aurelius

The healthy eye ought to see all visible things and not to say, I wish for green things; for this is the condition of a diseased eye. — Marcus Aurelius

Thereby gain much leisure, and save much trouble, and therefore at every action a man must privately by way of admonition suggest unto himself, What? may not this that now I go about, — Marcus Aurelius

But among the things readiest to hand to which you shall turn, let there be these two:
One is that things do not touch the soul, for they are external to its movement, but your anguish only comes from judgments within. The other is that all these things which you see now are changing and will cease to be, and constantly bear in mind how many of these changes you have already witnessed. The universe is transformation. Life is judgement. — Marcus Aurelius

If you do the task before you always adhering to strict reason with zeal and energy and yet with humanity, disregarding all lesser ends and keeping the divinity within you pure and upright, as though you were even now faced with its recall - if you hold steadily to this, staying for nothing and shrinking from nothing, only seeking in each passing action a conformity with nature and in each word and utterance a fearless truthfulness, then the good life shall be yours. And from this course no man has the power to hold you back. — Marcus Aurelius

Observe, in short, how transient and trivial is all mortal life; yesterday a drop of semen, tomorrow a handful of spice or ashes. Spend, therefore, these fleeting moments of earth as Nature would have you spend them, and then go to your rest with a good grace, as an olive falls in its season, with a blessing for the earth. — Marcus Aurelius

Death
a stopping of impressions through the senses, and of the pulling of the cords of motion, and of the ways of thought, and of service to the flesh. — Marcus Aurelius

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. — Marcus Aurelius

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

In all his conversation, far from all inhumanity, all boldness, and incivility, all greediness and impetuosity; never doing anything with such earnestness, and intention, that a man could say of him, that he did sweat about it: but contrariwise, all things distinctly, as at leisure; without trouble; orderly, soundly, and agreeably. — Marcus Aurelius

Think of what you have rather than of what you lack. Of the things you have, select the best and then reflect how eagerly you would have sought them if you did not have them. — Marcus Aurelius

He is an abscess on the universe who withdraws and separates himself from the reason of our common nature through being displeased with the things that happen; for the same nature that produces these things has produced you, too: — Marcus Aurelius

How much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks. — Marcus Aurelius

When thou art above measure angry, bethink thee how momentary is man's life. — Marcus Aurelius

Time is like a river made up of the events which happen, and a violent stream; for as soon as a thing has been seen, it is carried away, and another comes in its place, and this will be carried away too. — Marcus Aurelius

A very ridiculous thing it is, that any man should dispense with vice and wickedness in himself, which is in his power to restrain; and should go about to suppress it in others, which is altogether impossible. — Marcus Aurelius

Were you to live three thousand years, or even thirty thousand, remember that the sole life which a man can lose is that which he is living at the moment; and furthermore, that he can have no other life except the one he loses. This means that the longest life and the shortest amount to the same thing. For the passing minute is every man's equal possession, but what has once gone by is not ours. — Marcus Aurelius

Whatever time you choose is the right time. Not late, not early. — Marcus Aurelius

Since you are an integral part of a social system, let every act of yours contribute to the harmonization of social life. Any action that is not related directly or remotely to this social aim disturbs your life, and destroys your unity. — Marcus Aurelius

Men seek for seclusion in the wilderness, by the seashore, or in the mountains - a dream you have cherished only too fondly yourself. But such fancies are wholly unworthy of a philosopher, since at any moment you choose you can retire within yourself. Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul; above all, he who possesses resources in himself, which he need only contemplate to secure immediate ease of mind - the ease that is but another word for a well-ordered spirit. Avail yourself often, then, of this retirement, and so continually renew yourself. — Marcus Aurelius

Always remember what Heraclitus said: 'The death of earth is the birth of water, the death of water is the birth of atmosphere, the death of atmosphere is fire, and conversely.' Remember, too, his image of the man who forgets the way he is going; and: 'They are at variance with that with which they most continuously have converse (Reason which governs the Universe), and the things they meet with every day appear alien to them'; and again: 'We suppose that we act and speak'; and: 'We must not be like children with parents,' that is, accept things simply as we have received them. — Marcus Aurelius

Love only what befalls you and is spun for you by fate. — Marcus Aurelius

Then consider the Middle (and later the New) Comedy and what it aimed at - gradually degenerating into mere realism and empty technique. — Marcus Aurelius

Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life. — Marcus Aurelius

Hast thou reason? I have. Why then dost not thou use it? For if this does its own work, what else dost thou wish? — Marcus Aurelius

Man, what are you talking about? Me in chains? You may fetter my leg but my will, not even Zeus himself can overpower. — Marcus Aurelius

Why do you hunger for length of days? The point of life is to follow reason and the divine spirit and to accept whatever nature sends you. To live in this way is not to fear death, but to hold it in contempt. Death is only a thing of terror for those unable to live in the present. Pass on your way, then, with a smiling face, under the smile of him who bids you go — Marcus Aurelius

Waste no more time arguing that a good man should be. Be one. — Marcus Aurelius

The mind in itself wants nothing, unless it creates a want for itself; therefore it is both free from perturbation and unimpeded, if it does not perturb and impede itself. — Marcus Aurelius

All those [events in history] were such dramas as we see now, only with different actors. — Marcus Aurelius

Nothing befalls any man which he is not fitted to endure. — Marcus Aurelius

Every soul, the philosopher says, is involuntarily deprived of truth; consequently in the same way it is deprived of justice and temperance and benevolence and everything of the kind. It is most necessary to keep this in mind, for thus thou wilt be more gentle towards all. — Marcus Aurelius

If some one tells you that so and so speaks ill of you, do not defend yourself against what he says, but answer, 'He did not know my other faults, or he would not have mentioned these alone.' It — Marcus Aurelius

If our intellectual part is common, the reason also, in respect of which we are rational beings, is common: if this is so, common also is the reason which commands us what to do, and what not to do; if this is so, there is a common law also; if this is so, we are fellow-citizens; if this is so, we are members of some political community; if this is so, the world is in a manner a state. — Marcus Aurelius

Deem not life a thing of consequence. For look at the yawning void of the future, and at that other limitless space, the past. — Marcus Aurelius

In the same degree in which a man's mind is nearer to freedom from all passion, in the same degree also is it nearer to strength. — Marcus Aurelius

Objective judgment ... Unselfish action ... Willing acceptance ... of all external events. — Marcus Aurelius

Things can never touch the soul, but stand inert outside it, so that disquiet can arise only from fancies within. — Marcus Aurelius

Do not waste the remainder of thy life in thoughts about others, when thou dost not refer thy thoughts to some object of common utility. — Marcus Aurelius

Whenever you want to cheer yourself up, consider the good qualities of your companions, for example, the energy of one, the modesty of another, the generosity of yet another, and some other quality of another; for nothing cheers the heart as much as the images of excellence reflected in the character of our companions, all brought before us as fully as possible. Therefore, keep these images ready at hand. — Marcus Aurelius

Neither worse then or better is a thing made by being praised. — Marcus Aurelius

If you seek tranquillity, do less." Or (more accurately) do what's essential - what the logos of a social being requires, and in the requisite way. Which brings a double satisfaction: to do less, better. Because most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you'll have more time, and more tranquillity. Ask yourself at every moment, "Is this necessary?" But we need to eliminate unnecessary assumptions as well. To eliminate the unnecessary actions that follow. — Marcus Aurelius

In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present - I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world? — Marcus Aurelius

Keep thyself therefore, truly simple, good, sincere, grave, free from all ostentation, a lover of that which is just, religious, kind, tender-hearted, strong and vigorous to undergo anything that becomes thee. — Marcus Aurelius

Consider how many do not even know your name, and how many will soon forget it, and how those who now praise you will presently blame you. — Marcus Aurelius

23. Keep in mind how fast things pass by and are gone - those that are now, and those to come. Existence flows past us like a river: the "what" is in constant flux, the "why" has a thousand variations. Nothing is stable, not even what's right here. The infinity of past and future gapes before us - a chasm whose depths we cannot see. So it would take an idiot to feel self-importance or distress. Or any indignation, either. As if the things that irritate us lasted. 24. — Marcus Aurelius

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. — Marcus Aurelius

To stand up straight - not straightened — Marcus Aurelius

All things of the body stream away like a river, all things of the mind are dreams and delusion; life is warfare, and a visit to a strange land; the only lasting fame is oblivion. — Marcus Aurelius

All of us are creatures of a day; the rememberer and the remembered alike. — Marcus Aurelius

Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize? — Marcus Aurelius

Praise adds nothing to beauty
makes it neither better nor worse. — Marcus Aurelius

For all things fade and turn to fable, and quickly too, utter oblivion covers them like sand. — Marcus Aurelius