Quotes from 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.

From my Great-grandfather, not to have frequented public schools, and to have had good teachers at home, and to know that on such things a man should spend liberally.

praise does not make anything better or worse.

You have the power within you to endure anything, for your mere opinion can render it tolerable, perhaps even acceptable, by regarding it as an opportunity for enlightenment or a matter of duty.

There is no man so blessed that some who stand by his deathbed won't hail the occasion with delight.

Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature's delight.

fame in a world like this is worthless.

Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what's left and live it properly.

In this flowing stream, then, on which there is no abiding, what is there of the things which hurry by on which a man would set a high price? It would be just as if a man should fall in love with one of the sparrows which fly by, but it has already passed out of sight.

Wilt thou, then, my soul, never be good and simple and one and naked, more manifest than the body which surrounds thee?

Stop talking about what the good man is like, and just be one.

When you need encouragement, think of the qualities the people around you have: this one's energy, that one's modesty, another's generosity, and so on. Nothing is as encouraging as when virtues are visibly embodied in the people around us, when we're practically showered with them. It's good to keep this in mind.

Though thou shouldst be going to live three thousand years, and as many times ten thousand years, still remember that no man loses any other life than this which he now lives, nor lives any other than this which he now loses. The longest and shortest are thus brought to the same. For the present is the same to all, though that which perishes is not the same; and so that which is lost appears to be a mere moment.

If unwilling to rise in the morning, say to thyself, 'I awake to do the work of a man.

Give your heart to the trade you have learnt, and draw refreshment from it.

Look at the past—empire succeeding empire—and from that, extrapolate the future: the same thing. No escape from the rhythm of events. Which is why observing life for forty years is as good as a thousand. Would you really see anything new?

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

The offender needs pity, not wrath; those who must needs be corrected, should be treated with tact and gentleness; and one must be always ready to learn better. 'The best kind of revenge is, not to become like unto them.

No more roundabout discussions of what makes a good man. Be one!

Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.

Never value anything as profitable that compels you to break your promise, to lose your self-respect, to hate any man, to suspect, to curse, to act the hypocrite, to desire anything that needs walls and curtains:

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.

Love the art, poor as it may be, that thou hast learned, and be content with it; and pass through the rest of life like one who has intrusted to the gods with his whole soul all that he has, making thyself neither the tyrant nor the slave of any man.

People who labor all their lives but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse toward are wasting their time—even when hard at work.