Quotes from Marcus Aurelius

Why do we shrink from change? What can come into being save by change?

There is change in all things. You yourself are subject to continual change and some decay, and this is common to the entire universe.

Nothing befalls a man except what is in his nature to endure.

Time is like a river of fleeting events, and its current is strong; as soon as something comes into sight, it is swept past us, and something else takes its place, and that too will be swept away.

Consider how much more you often suffer from your anger and grief than from those very things for which you are angry and grieved.

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

Take full account of the excellencies which you possess, and in gratitude remember how you would hanker after them, if you had them not.

The true worth of a man is to be measured by the objects he pursues.

Without a purpose, nothing should be done.

The one thing worth living for is to keep one's soul pure.

To them that ask, where have you seen the Gods, or how do you know for certain there are Gods, that you are so devout in their worship? I answer: Neither have I ever seen my own soul, and yet I respect and honor it.

If thou workest at that which is before thee ... expecting nothing, fearing nothing, but satisfied with thy present activity according to Nature, and with heroic truth in every word and sound which thou utterest, thou wilt live happy. And there is no man who is able to prevent this.

I often marvel how it is that though each man loves himself beyond all else, he should yet value his own opinion of himself less than that of others.

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.

The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject.

A good man does not spy around for the black spots in others, but presses unswervingly on towards his mark.

The art of living is more like that of wrestling than of dancing. The main thing is to stand firm and be ready for an unforeseen attack.

To live each day as though one's last, never flustered, never apathetic, never attitudinizing-here is perfection of character.

Let them know a real man, who lives as he was meant to live.

What pulls the strings is the force hidden within; there lies ... the real man.

Look well into thyself; there is a source which will always spring up if thou wilt always search there.

Man must be arched and buttressed from within, else the temple wavers to dust.

How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.

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