Quotes from Marcus Aurelius

It is precisely its unorthodox touches—its intimation of the idea of a personal god, its flashes of vulnerability and pain, its unwavering commitment to virtue above pleasure and to tranquillity above happiness, its unmistakable stamp of an uncompromisingly honest soul seeking the light of grace in a dark world—that lend the work its special power to charm and inspire.

I am made up of substance and what animates it, and neither one can ever stop existing, any more than it began to. Every portion of me will be reassigned as another portion of the world, and that in turn transformed into another. Ad infinitum. I was produced through one such transformation, and my parents too, and so on back. Ad infinitum. N.B.: Still holds good, even if the world goes through recurrent cycles.

And indeed he who pursues pleasure as good, and avoids pain as evil, is guilty of impiety.

To enter others' minds and let them enter yours.

People exist for one another. You can instruct or endure them.

How rotten and spurious is the man who says: "I have decided to be straightforward with you.

Thou must be like a promontory of the sea, against which though the waves beat continually, yet it both itself stands, and about it are those swelling waves stilled and quieted.

refrain from all anger and passion.

4. It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.

When you deal with irrational animals, with things and circumstances, be generous and straightforward. You are rational; they are not. When you deal with fellow human beings, behave as one. They share in the logos. And invoke the gods regardless. Don't worry about how long you'll go on doing this. A single afternoon would be enough. 24.

Love the discipline you know, and let it support you. Entrust

73. When you have done a good act and another has received it, why do you look for a third thing besides these, as fools do, either to have the reputation of having done a good act or to obtain a return?

But Marcus Aurelius knows that what the heart is full of, the man will do. 'Such as thy thoughts and ordinary cogitations are,' he says, 'such will thy mind be in time.' And every page of the book shows us that he knew thought was sure to issue in act. He drills his soul, as it were, in right principles, that when the time comes, it may be guided by them. To wait until the emergency is to be too late.

Salvation: to see each thing for what it is— its nature and its purpose. To do only what is right, say only what is true, without holding back. What else could it be but to live life fully— to pay out goodness like the rings of a chain, without the slightest gap.

Not to be overwhelmed by what you imagine, but just do what you can and should. And

Remember, too, on every occasion that leads you to vexation to apply this principle: not that this is a misfortune, but that to bear it nobly is good fortune.

short, know this: Human lives are brief and trivial. Yesterday a blob of semen; tomorrow embalming fluid, ash. To pass through this brief life as nature demands. To give it up without complaint. Like an olive that ripens and falls. Praising its mother, thanking the tree it grew on.

If asked, he would no doubt have responded that "true" slavery is the self-enslavement of the mind to emotion and desire

But death certainly, and life, honour and dishonour, pain and pleasure, all these things equally happen to good men and bad, being things which make us neither better nor worse. Therefore they are neither good nor evil.

29. Stop whatever you're doing for a moment and ask yourself: Am I afraid of death because I won't be able to do this anymore?

Always run to the short way; and the short way is the natural: accordingly say and do everything in conformity with the soundest reason. For such a purpose frees a man from trouble, and warfare, and all artifice and ostentatious display.

17. If a thing is in your own power, why do you do it? But if it is in the power of another, whom do you blame? The atoms (chance) or the gods? Both are foolish. You must blame nobody. For if you can, correct that which is the cause; but if you cannot do this, correct at least the thing itself; but if you cannot do even this, of what use is it to you to find fault? For nothing should be done without a purpose.

If thou shouldst live three thousand, or as many as ten thousands of years, yet remember this, that man can part with no life properly, save with that little part of life, which he now lives: and that which he lives, is no other, than that which at every instant he parts with.

Wait for it patiently—annihilation or metamorphosis.