Tag: marcus aurelius

Stop wandering about! You aren’t likely to read your own notebooks, or ancient histories, or the anthologies you’ve collected to enjoy in your old age. Get busy with life’s purpose, toss aside empty hopes, get active in your own rescue — if you care for yourself at all — and do it while you can.

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 3.14

Everything lasts for a day, the one who remembers and the remembered.

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.35

It’s a disgrace in this life when the soul surrenders first while the body refuses to.

 ~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.29

Both Alexander the Great and his mule-keeper were both brought to the same place by death— they were either received into the all-generative reason, or scattered among the atoms.

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.24

This is the mark of perfection of character—to spend each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, laziness, or any pretending.

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.69

“Soon you will die, and still you aren’t sincere, undisturbed, or free from suspicion that external things can harm you, nor are you gracious to all, knowing that wisdom and acting justly are one and the same.

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.37

You aren’t bothered, are you, because you weigh a certain amount and not twice as much? So why get worked up that you’ve been given a certain lifespan and not more? Just as you are satisfied with your normal weight, so you should be with the time you’ve been given.

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.49

Walk the long gallery of the past, of empires and kingdoms succeeding each other without
number. And you can also see the future, for surely it will be exactly the same, unable to deviate from the present rhythm. It’s all one whether we’ve experienced forty years or an aeon. What more is there to see?

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.49

Think of the life you have lived until now as over and, as a dead man, see what’s left as a bonus and live it according to Nature. Love the hand that fate deals you and play it as your own, for what could be more fitting?

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.56-57

Don’t behave as if you are destined to live forever. What’s fated hangs over you. As long as you
live and while you can, become good now.

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.17

Let each thing you would do, say or intend be like that of a dying person.

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2.11.1

The person who follows reason in all things will have both leisure and a readiness to act— they are at once both cheerful and self-composed.

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 10.12b

If someone is slipping up, kindly correct them and point out what they missed. But if you can’t, blame yourself—or no one.

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 10.4

How satisfying it is to dismiss and block out any upsetting or foreign impression, and
immediately to have peace in all things.

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.2

We are like many pellets of incense falling on the same altar. Some collapse sooner, others later, but it makes no difference.

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.15

If you’ve seen the present, you’ve seen all things, from time immemorial into all of eternity. For everything that happens is related and the same.

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.37

Meditate often on the swiftness with which all that exists and is coming into being is swept by us and carried away. For substance is like a river’s unending flow, its activities continually changing and causes infinitely shifting so that almost nothing at all stands still.

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.23

When you are distressed by an external thing, it’s not the thing itself that troubles you, but only your judgment of it. And you can wipe this out at a moment’s notice.

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 8.47

You’ll more quickly find an earthly thing kept from the earth than you will a person cut off from other human beings.

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 9.9.3

Dig deep within yourself, for there is a fountain of goodness ever ready to flow if you will keep digging.

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.59

People aren’t in awe of your sharp mind? So be it. But you have many other qualities you can’t claim to have been deprived of at birth. Display then those qualities in your own power: honesty, dignity, endurance, chastity, contentment, frugality, kindness, freedom, persistence, avoiding gossip, and magnanimity.

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.5

So someone’s good at taking down an opponent, but that doesn’t make them more community minded, or modest, or well-prepared for any circumstance, or more tolerant of the faults of others.

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.52

Such behavior! People don’t want to praise their contemporaries whose lives they actually share, but hold great expectations for the praise of future generations—people they haven’t met or ever will! This is akin to being upset that past generations didn’t praise you.

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.18

You have proof in the extent of your wanderings that you never found the art of living anywhere —not in logic, nor in wealth, fame, or in any indulgence. Nowhere. Where is it then? In doing what human nature demands. How is a person to do this? By having principles be the source of desire and action. What principles? Those to do with good and evil, indeed in the belief that there is no good for a human being except what creates justice, self-control, courage and
freedom, and nothing evil except what destroys these things.

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 8.1(5)

There’s nothing worse than a wolf befriending sheep. Avoid false friendship at all costs. If you are good, straightforward, and well meaning it should show in your eyes and not escape notice.

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 11.15

Everything turns on your assumptions about it, and that’s on you. You can pluck out the hasty judgment at will, and like steering a ship around the point, you will find calm seas, fair weather and a safe port.

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 12.22

Are you angry when someone’s armpits stink or when their breath is bad? What would be the point? Having such a mouth and such armpits, there’s going to be a smell emanating. You say, they must have sense, can’t they tell how they are offending others? Well, you have sense too, congratulations! So, use your natural reason to awaken theirs, show them, call it out. If the person will listen, you will have cured them without useless anger. No drama nor unseemly
show required.

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.28

Leave the past behind, let the grand design take care of the future, and instead only rightly guide the present to reverence and justice. Reverence so that you’ll love what you’ve been allotted, for nature brought you both to each other. Justice so that you’ll speak the truth freely and without evasion, and so that you’ll act only as the law and value of things require.

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 12.1

Yes, getting your wish would have been so nice. But isn’t that exactly why pleasure trips us up? Instead, see if these things might be even nicer—a great soul, freedom, honesty, kindness, saintliness. For there is nothing so pleasing as wisdom itself, when you consider how sure footed and effortless the works of understanding and knowledge are.

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.9

The person who does wrong, does wrong to themselves. The unjust person is unjust to
themselves—making themselves evil.

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 9.4

That which isn’t good for the hive, isn’t good for the bee.

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.54

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, because an artful life requires being
prepared to meet and withstand sudden and unexpected attacks.

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.61